Tel-Chai Nation

I found a number of articles from the Jerusalem Post about what fashion designers and models are doing after October 7, 2023 and the war. Let's begin with this one, which unfortunately tells an absurd story about modesty:

Trending toward modesty

While not everyone has seen this, one big phenomenon noted by Peleg Mizrachi and others in the fashion industry is a new tendency for women to dress more modestly. She says that many regard less skin baring as a means of helping our soldiers win. “In Israel, religion is more present in daily life. It makes sense that when something like this happens, people go back to their traditional roots.”

The modesty trend has also crept its way into Tel Aviv boutiques. According to Sophie and Ayal Levy, creators of the Spacey brand that sells designs wholesale to upscale boutiques, there is suddenly a demand for longer skirt lengths and sleeves in the trendy Tel Aviv stores where they used to sell their sleeveless mini-dresses.

“The war has inspired many people to return to religion,” Sophie observes.

Post-Oct. 7, Jerusalem designer Nina Broder has amended many of her flowy, romantic signature designs to incorporate longer sleeves and higher necklines.

TEHILA ROSENBAUM, founder of One of a Kind, designs unique headscarves, mostly for religious women who cover their hair.

“There is a trend of more women covering their hair since the war began,” she says. “I have a client who used to cover partially, but after the war she began covering all her hair. And some women who used to wear a scarf only on Shabbat now wear their hair covered every day.”

[...] She publishes videos on YouTube that teach women how to tie and wrap their hair. “I have received many responses from women all over the country and abroad about how the subject of modesty and style speaks to them.”

For heaven's sake, return to religion is great, but if they're saying not dressing modestly is wrong, or that the sole way you can be religious is to dress modestly, that's practically what led to the whole 10.7.2023 tragedy in the first place. This is insulting to the intellect, and Mrs. Rosenbaum is only making it worse, considering many of the female hostages may have been forced to wear burkas/hijabs. Even if this doesn't refer to the industry wholesale, it's still very appalling, and makes it look like there's still a whole segment out that believes the victim is to blame. Even the following doesn't sound entirely accurate when they allude to how National Socialists dressed:

RACHEL GETZ SALOMON, head of the fashion department at NB Haifa School of Design in Ma’alot Tarshiha, explains the phenomenon. “Wars and trauma historically influence art,” she says.

“During World War I, women opened their husbands’ closets and wore their clothing to work. They took over the jobs that their husbands had left when they went off to fight. If they worked in the fields or in factories, they dressed in pants.

“During World War II, Nazis were very exacting about how they dressed. People were encouraged to dress elegantly, and the silhouette became more tailored. Bomber jackets, sunglasses, and boots made their way from the military to civilian wear, becoming cool and sexy,” Getz Salomon says.

“Unfortunately, we are still in the middle of it. But in Israel, we adapt quickly. The dress that Alon Livne made for Eden Golan exemplifies the pain and trauma. Aesthetics that reflect the trauma also helps us process the trauma. The community saw this dress and could suddenly deal with their feelings and even heal a little, recognize their own pain. The strips on the dress resembled bandages. People saw it and intuitively understood it,” she says.

“Even Marc Jacobs came up with a ready-to-wear line that referenced the aesthetics of Oct. 7,” the fashion educator says. “He used colors like stone, dust, and ash. He made it a significant part of his collection. In our school, we are seeing the students explore how the war influences fashion, body image, and culture.”

Ahem. This is rather ambiguous, and fails to note that in the early 20th century when WW2 came about, German women were expected to dress to NOT impress, and their career choices were limited. Even if an individual German woman was antisemitic, she still didn't get literal freedom (and the talk of "sexy" here is disgusting). So this only ends up perpetuating insults to the intellect, and that's very appalling. That's why I find it appalling when ultra-Orthodox society demands dress codes for women, and men, lest we forget, with the Satmar's expectation that married women shave their heads under a wig very obscene. Oddly enough, the Post article does mention:

Keydar, who is focusing on World War II fashion history for her PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that war has been a great influencer of fashion.

“We can see how they ingeniously crafted clothing, makeup, and accessories during severe raw material shortages,” she says. “For instance, Elizabeth Arden’s Victory Red lipstick, initially marketed to female soldiers and later to the general population, was chosen explicitly because Hitler notoriously disliked women wearing red lipstick, making it a symbol of unity.

“During the war, the silk and nylon industry also shifted to produce parachutes and other military supplies,” Keydar said. “Women, unwilling to appear in public without stockings, found a particularly creative solution in ‘liquid stockings,’ which were painted on the legs to create the illusion of wearing actual hosiery.”

Well at least they get this right. But any attempt to make it sound like modest dress is literally required to "prove yourself" is offensive and runs the gauntlet of indoctrination. Seriously, anybody doing that should be ashamed and apologize.

That said, here's another article from the filmings taking place at the Tower of David at Jerusalem's Old City, and in it, there's a picture of Mia Schem, one of the rescued hostages from 10.7.2023, who's wearing a dress that's anything but modest, so maybe the prior article's not reflecting all, but even so, what was told there was very troubling. And then, this article is more promising, as it presents more of how Schem's thankfully dressing anything but modestly:

Mia Schem, 22, was kidnapped from the Supernova festival along with her friend Elia Toledano (Toledano’s body was discovered by the IDF in December). Shot in the arm and held captive, Mia endured months of psychological torture at the hands of Hamas – locked in a room in a Gaza family’s house with a male guard surveilling her every move at all times. The wife of the family, jealous of her husband’s attention to the hostage, would periodically starve her.

Though forced in a Hamas-released propaganda video to follow a script and say she was receiving good medical care, in reality a Palestinian veterinarian operated on her wounded arm.

Released in a Qatar-negotiated hostage exchange deal in November, she has described her time in captivity as “hell,” frequently being told she wasn’t going home alive, and noting “there are no innocent civilians” in Gaza.

Since her release, Mia has been advocating for the hostages remaining in the Gaza Strip. She attended the State of the Union address in Washington on March 7 as a guest of House Speaker Mike Johnson, and met with US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt and Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog. Mia then attended Elton John’s Oscar party in Los Angeles in a white dress with yellow ribbon pin, reminding the world about the hostages still in captivity.

But then in this article:

Return to religion – Modest clothing has become a trend as even less-observant Jews take on religious practices, turning to God to help them through these difficult times. The modesty trend is seen in women wearing fashionable skirts, more discreet tops, and headscarves.

I wonder if these are leftists taking up such trends? Somehow, it figures they in particular wouldn't comprehend that clothes alone don't make a better person. In any case, those who're doing this are really making a farce out of the Judaist religion.

In the following article, it's noted there's no universal dress code in Israel for mourning:

SINCE OCT. 7, she says, Israelis have been experiencing both collective and individual trauma and grief. “While many cultures have a code of dress for grief and mourning to signal to others to be careful with their emotions, in Israel post-Oct. 7 there is no such universal code of dress that tells people we are grieving,” she explains.

“Each person expresses what they are feeling depending on individual timelines of grief and trauma and familial and cultural backgrounds. Wearables, such as hostage necklaces or yellow ribbons, are identifiable as solidarity with others. Clothing, such as slogan T-shirts, are easy to decipher.

“But one size does not fit all. It can be dangerous to assume that we can read from a person’s clothes what he or she is feeling. For one person, wearing dark colors could express despair; for others, it may be a sign of strength in the face of adversity.

“For some people, wearing high fashion and colorful clothes may feel antithetical to their mood, while for many it is an act of defiance against grief or a commitment to live each moment fully because of the uncertainty of the future.”

[...] “There is an individual grief and a communal grief, and it is a spectrum. When a hostage is captured, the captor has complete control of every aspect of his or her life. When he is freed, he may not want to do (or wear) anything just because someone suggests it.” Choosing clothing, she says, becomes his or her way of regaining control of life.

Well if a woman chooses to wear something as skimpy as a bikini, that too is a way of regaining control of her life, isn't it? So I'm very disappointed in anybody, fashion business or otherwise, who actually believes modesty will magically solve everything. All it does is make validate what some left-wing feminists actually think, and there's quite a few leftists in this country, regrettably, who take such a knee-jerk path, following in the footsteps of USA leftists, apparently buying into every perverse thing they conceive, hook, line and sinker. If that's what's happening now too, it's only a grave problem.

And, when one considers what Iranian woman are facing, how is dressing modestly in Israel sending a good message? Do people like Broder and Rosenbaum actually think they're being a "light unto the nations" when they take up paths like "modesty"?

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