Purpose: This study aims to understand and explain the lived experiences of Iranian hijab-style influencers on Instagram. The central concern is how the identities of women involved in hijab-style practices are shaped and redefined through the interaction of hijab, fashion, individuality, religiosity, and the digital environment. Rather than reducing hijab-style to a media, consumer, or fashion-oriented phenomenon, the study focuses on the lived experiences of these actors and the meanings they attribute to their presence and activities on Instagram.

Methodology: This qualitative study employed a virtual ethnography approach. Data were collected through participant observation of Instagram pages, participation in events related to fashion and hijab, in-depth interviews, field notes, and content analysis of the Instagram pages of six Iranian hijab-style influencers, each with more than 400,000 followers. The collected data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify and interpret the major themes associated with lived experience, identity, hijab, and digital life.

Findings: The findings indicate that Instagram is not merely a platform for hijab-style influencers to share images and fashion-related content; rather, it has become an integral part of their everyday lifeworld. The boundaries between offline and digital life have become increasingly intertwined, with clothing choices, communication practices, personal narratives, and social relationships being shaped through continuous interaction with Instagram. Within this digital lifeworld, hijab is not simply a religious signifier but also serves as a means of expressing individuality, representing lifestyle, and constructing and reconstructing identity. Hijab-style influencers creatively combine religiosity, fashion, and individuality in an effort to present more diverse representations of Muslim women. At the same time, their identities are continuously reconstructed through interactions with audiences, mechanisms of visibility, platform practices, and the attention economy.

Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that hijab-style cannot be understood solely in terms of changes in clothing practices or fashion consumption. Rather, it constitutes part of broader transformations in the identity experiences of Iranian women in the context of the expanding digital environment. The digital lifeworld of hijab-style influencers provides a space for negotiating tradition, modernity, religiosity, and individuality, where hijab shifts from being a fixed and unidimensional signifier to a dynamic resource for communication, self-expression, and identity reconstruction.