I’ve been turning this over-and-over in my head. What do I come out of the gate with on my first blog entry for Eclectique|916? Well first Welcome!

How did this happen? Last year around this time, I reviewed the September fashion magazines with an email essay to my friends and fam list. It wasn’t my first email essay, but it did prompt one friend to suggest starting a blog.

So I’ll pick up where I left off on that last essay. I’ve already flipped through the 2008 September Vogue (eh!); Town and Country still has the best horoscopes; Bazaar and InStyle haven’t shown up on the magazine racks yet, and I did grab a hardcopy of the New York Times Sunday edition. Haven’t had a chance to read the articles in the Women’s Fall Fashion special. I got my Vanity Fair with Maureen Orth’s cover story on France’s first lady, Carla Bruni. I think there’s a first ladies theme going around this season. At least one of these door stoppers should keep me company on the plane ride to the DNC Convention in Denver.

When I tripped up on three Muslim Fashion videos on WashingtonPost.com, I said “Hold the phone!” Yes. Muslim Fashion. I don’t know if I should follow that up with an exclamation point or question mark. Or maybe add that punctuation to follow WashingtonPost.com(!?) The source itself is even more astounding to me.

Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Small Biz, a bi-monthly publication of BusinessWeek, highlighted Tayyibah Taylor of Atlanta Georgia, founder and editor-in-chief Azizah, a magazine for Muslim American women.

WaPo.com’s Sabrina Enayatulla lines up three videos with tips for Muslim women on how to style your hijab for day and night. I’ve posted them below. Our resident good taste expert a la Tim Gunn is Hadya Mubarak, a native of Florida, wife, mother, and a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown University. I met Hadya two years ago when she agreed to be our “Muslim expert” for a Community Cinema screening of a documentary called “Shadya.” She was recommended to me by KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, a local non-profit. She lives up to all the high praise.

Check out these videos. Each is about 3:15 in length. Of course there are those pesky commercials to pay for the server space and production crew.

Gotta give kudos to WashingtonPost.com. Good taste in fashion is next to godliness.

A MUSLIM WOMAN’S CLOSET

WHAT IS HIJAB?