In the rundown district in the city of Tel Aviv known as Gan Hachashmal, or Electric Garden (named after a local electric power station), the seedy Bauhaus-style storefronts that once housed electrical appliance shops are now home to young fashion designers whose edgy, hip clothing and accessories are setting the tone for what the rest of the country wears.
Since the late 90s, these young fashion designers as well as their compatriots in other parts of the city have been clothing the people of Tel Aviv – Israel’s closest approximation of a fashion capital. They had role models, people like fashion designer Gideon Oberson and Gottex bathing suit matriarch, Lea Gottleib, or international success Alber Elbaz, the head designer at Parisian couture label Lanvin, who moved to Tel Aviv from Morocco at the age of ten, and studied at Shenkar, Israel’s best-known design school. The local design sensibility and seasonal schedule is different than its international counterparts. Tel Aviv-based designers focus on a kind of couture-casual for their clientele, given the local climate in which the fashion culture is a youthful one. Israeli women and men wear their jeans to work and to play, and that they like to look and feel young during the long summer season.
At the same time, people are starting to appreciate more edgy fashion in Israel, judging by the number of boutiques and studios dotting the ‘in’ neighborhoods in each city, and there is a growing appreciation for one-of-a-kind looks that local fashionistas yearn to see and buy. The annual Designers Market that is held twice a year in Tel Aviv (in February and August), features more than 100 new and established designers and draws large numbers of discerning shoppers, who come to purchase Israeli-designed pieces at cost.
On the international scene, there are several designers who have made the leap from local sales to exporting abroad. Ronen Chen, who graduated from Shenkar in 1990 and began designing simple, modern pieces for the typical urban woman, had beginner’s luck locally and then abroad, selling his collection to boutiques and department stores in London, Ireland, Japan and the U.S. He eventually scaled back and currently produces primarily for the Israeli market, with eight stores throughout Israel and limited sales to U.S. boutiques through a New York showroom, a familiar tactic for more than a few Israeli designers.
For budding Tel Aviv designers who haven’t yet opened storefronts, the weekly Dizengoff Boutique in the Dizengoff Shopping Center has been one way to reach new clientele. Created as an informal place for designers looking to market their merchandise, what was a loose collection of craftspeople tucked into an unused corner of the mall has become a weekly fashion boutique, with its own fitting rooms and hours every Thursday afternoon, and each Friday until the start of Shabbat.
From Dizengoff Center, successful designers moved up the block, literally, opening studios and stores on Dizengoff Street, which has always been a center for fashion through the years. As the street became crowded with stores, designers searched for affordable space elsewhere, opening shops along Sheinkin, in the Basel neighborhood, and farther south, in Gan Hachashmal and Neve Tzedek.
All of this growth was driven by customer demand, the legions of young, stylish Israeli women from Tel Aviv and its surrounding towns, who, thanks to the economic boom that took place in Israel in the 90s, had money to burn and wanted the quality, style and variety that they saw outside of Israel. Call it the kova tembel (the traditional kibbutz hat) backlash: Kibbutz communalism is out, capitalistic individualism is in.
Prices may seem cheap by American standards for boutique fashions: The average cost of Israeli designed women's clothing falls between 200-400 shekels ($60-120) for tops and 300 500 shekels for bottoms ($80 $150). That's not necessarily expensive in American or European terms, but for the average Israeli family of four living on 7,000 shekels approximately $1,600 a month, those are steep prices.
But even the prohibitive price tags haven't stalled this particular trend. Locals feel that the Israeli designer trend is still in its ‘teenage’ stage. Eventually there will be fashion seasons – despite the lack of a real fall, winter or spring – and most importantly, Israelis like to shop. As the saying goes, when things get bad, Israelis go shopping.
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