Exhibition : Israel à la Mode!
Second year grad student at the MA in Fashion Studies at Parsons Paris, Or Rosenblum is curating the first Fashion Exhibition of the World Zionist Organization alongside Shaked Arkin. Opening this Thursday in Paris, Israël à la Mode showcases the industrial and cultural fashion system in Israel and will be open in Paris from September 19 – 24, 2019 (closed on Saturday the 22nd).
We’ve asked Or to give us more information on his exhibition, after he spent the majority of his summer collecting documents, images, and articles at the Central Zionist Archives of the World Zionist Organization.
“Israël à La Mode is an exhibition which highlights and uncovers the industrial and cultural fashion system in Israel. Drawing on unique archival documents gathered from the World Zionist Organisation in Jerusalem, it emphasizes various state related and industrial figures, mediums, events and achievements which ignited Israeli textile and fashionable dress to public acclaim. All of the documents which surfaced in the archive, as shown in the exhibition, claim a bottom line when presented together: When we speak of Israeli fashion we are not only referring to a system of production but a system of culture/s. Magazine and newspaper articles, fashion exhibition invitations, private letters, and organisational manifestos trigger semantic notions which are unique to Israel and furthermore connect it to other fashion capitals. Here, titles such as “Fashion Manufacturers”, “Fashion Critics”, “Fashion Plates”, “Fashion Photographers” and state-related documents find place in one part of the exhibition space in order to describe an entrepreneurial, rich, and complex landscape. The other part of the exhibition, showing items from the most famous Zionist archive, exemplifies a site which is not meant for a symbolic transaction between the visitor and the state of Israel, but rather between a visitor and a culture – Israel’s fashion culture.”
Entrance is free for students! Use this link to register.
We hope to see all at the opening of Israël à la Mode. The opening night will hold an open table with award-winning Israeli fashion designer Yossi Katz and Head archivist of the Rose Archive for Fashion and Textile at Shenkar, Tal Amit.