“In almost every country that is traditionally considered a danger zone, there is fashion,” Vanessa Friedman, fashion director at the New York Times tells us in “Fashion during wartime,” published today. She then likens Tel Aviv’s Tuesday night graduate student show at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design to catwalks in Kiev, Zambia and even Afghanistan.
A closer example of a fashion show in a “danger zone” would have been Gaza’s first children’s fashion walk earlier this year. The Gaza show was a sad, underfunded affair with no Palestinian brands and two Israeli lines featured. The full depression of the blockade was on display, reminding spectators that Gaza doesn’t produce quality clothes anymore. Gaza can barely feed itself.
By comparison, the Tel Aviv show was in a grand auditorium. Leading Israeli actress Keren Mor attended. And unlike Afghanistan and Gaza, the danger zone Friedman dedicates valuable New York Times real estate to was not one of raining bombs, or entire wedding parties annihilated, or beach-going youths cruelly killed.
Rather, in Tel Aviv, the war was experienced via text messages. Friedman quotes Leah Perez, the curator of the fashion show:
“[A]ll of a sudden everyone started getting text messages on their mobile phones that the sirens were going off, and the rockets were coming to Tel Aviv. We were in a big exhibition space with no bomb shelter. So I had to decide if we should evacuate or not.”
They didn’t evacuate. The fashion show continued. Regrettably the “champagne after-party had been canceled” — which Friedman says is an example that “defiance in the name of aesthetics only goes so far” for brave Tel Aviv.
P.S. The article plugs Maskit, deemed Israel’s first or only luxury clothing line now rebranded under new ownership. Ruth Dayan, the wife of Moshe Dayan, founded the line, which uses motifs of Palestinian and Lebanese tadris. Friedman mentions the “traditional” sources of inspiration, but calls the ripping off of the designs “elevating the cultural heritage of the region.” Perhaps cultural appropriation is even more endemic to the upscale fashion industry, than fashion shows in danger zones.
This ain’t no party……
Those plucky fashionistas stayed for the entire show, what perseverance in the face of danger… Funny how she ties war and fashion, with danger. A sales pitch like that will certainly get the diaspora shoppers hungry for new racy dresses.
Cultural appropriation – I like this concept. Should be ‘Arab’ cultural appropriation.
from the gaza fashion show link:
i didn’t know that. when i was in gaza a palestinian woman told me it’s really hard to get decent thread there anymore (embroidery and otherwise). it’s israel’s way of making their product unsellable. and the fabric available to them is very limited.
@Allison:
Thanks for the article. I very glad that although more than 1,000 missile attacks (only 100 today after the “cease fire”), life in Israel continues in all fields.
BTW, Allison, the designer of the clothes in the photo is Rowan Shaaban, a Palestinian from the Palestinian town Tur’an, North Israel.
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shouldn’t Gaza be renamed
wouldn’t auschwitz be a likely fit
oh nevermind
in just a few years
the people locked up in auschwitz
were fought for and many were rescued
Gaza is more like being an abused slave for life
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G-d Help us
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