Heroines: Fashion and Hope in World War II

Back in October I went to see the exhibition 'Heroines: Fashion and Hope in World War II' at the Design Museum Holon. The exhibition, which closes in April, looks at design as a symbol of hope during World War II.
The exhibition opens with the story of Hedy Strand, a Czech fashion designer who, together with her husband, perished in the Holocaust. For many years, evidence of Hedy's talent lay hidden in a forgotten envelope kept by relatives in the United States, until her sketches and designs were finally brought to life in an exhibition by the Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The Design Museum Holon has borrowed elements of that exhibition and recreated eight of Strand's design ensembles in Israel, presenting them alongside her personal story. Her design atelier is also reconstructed, complete with a rotating stage that displays her garments as if in a haute couture studio.

The exhibition continues with 'Unarmed Warriors' which follows the women on the American and British home fronts coping with WWII through fashion. Among the items on display are handbags made from telephone wires, original US Air Force makeup compacts, hats, earrings and Forget-Me-Not bracelets worn by women to remember their men fighting abroad. There is a contraption created to draw seams on women's stockings when silk wasn't available, glow-in-the-dark accessories made to light the way during blackouts, and victory pins worn to support the war effort, including diamond versions designed by Cartier.
The accessories in the exhibition are accompanied by the magazine and newspaper advertisements from the 1940s that promoted the items.

A side gallery of the museum includes a selection of items from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, such as a sweater knitted by a concentration camp victim, made from improvised knitting needles and yarn unravelled from a German soldier's socks, a pendant sculpted from bread, a belt made from electrical wires, and a bra created and sewn from stolen fabric. Each item tells a story of how people maintained their grooming and dignity during dark times.

The upper galleries of the 'Heroines' exhibition looks at life after the war. The longing for new beginnings clashed with shortages on the home front and ongoing rehabilitation processes, but thanks to boundless creativity, various raw materials were transformed into new designs. The first section, 'If There Is Flour, There Is Fashion', displays dresses sewn from patterned flour sackcloth, above, a kind of upcycling effort designed out of necessity.

Following that, 'Around the World' explores how the waterproof, durable escape maps once used by Allied pilots and soldiers were transformed into striking couture dresses after the war. The display features six reproduction dresses made from silk-printed maps, inspired by 1940s designs. In the same space, 'Make Love Not War' presents six reproduction wedding gowns crafted from white parachute silk of the same era, set against the dramatic backdrop of a billowing white parachute, above.

The final section of the 'Heroines' exhibition displays the Gottex bathing suits of designer Lea Gottlieb, the Holocaust survivor who created her swimsuit empire in Israel after the war. From arriving in Israel with nothing, she rose to international fame and became a pillar of Israeli fashion.
The gallery is designed to mimic a massive, empty swimming pool surrounded by women in colourful swimsuits. Gottlieb's iconic collections, drawing on art history, flowers, and traditional handicrafts, have graced the covers of world-famous magazines and were worn by supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer. The exhibition also features the swimsuits adored by Princess Diana.

Gottlieb often used daisies in her swimsuit designs, alluding to how she carried a large bouquet of daisies in her native Hungary whenever she went to visit her husband in a forced labour camp, to hide the yellow Jewish star pinned to her clothing and draw less notice from the Nazi soldiers. The daisies appeared over and over again in Gottlieb's designs, on bodices and bottoms of her bikinis and one-piece suits, a personal testament to the designer's intense desire to survive and continue to live and thrive.

At the end, the museum's Lab Space features a special section titled 'Iron Swords Heroines', below, highlighting the stories of women whose actions during the 7th October 2023 attack made a profound impact. The display honours women who fought off terrorists, rescued others, and intervened at critical moments to prevent further violence and save lives. Together, these narratives provide a powerful and moving conclusion to the exhibition.

* This post has been shared on Mosaic Monday, Busy Monday, Anything Goes, The Good. The Random. The Fun., Inspire Me Monday, Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop and Wednesday Around the World.

Colour

Back in December I went to see the exhibition "Colour" at the Design Museum in Holon. The exhibition explored the subject of colour from a variety of perspectives: how we understand, perceive, and interpret colour, how it affects objects, and how a specific colour becomes associated with a value, product, or abstract concept. It showcased the works of some 30 Israeli designers from various design disciplines: product design, textile design, visual communication, fashion, and illustration. Most of the pieces were specially created for the exhibition and were being displayed for the first time.

The lower gallery of the museum featured projects concerned with colour as a material, exploring how it comes into being by means of both innovative and traditional technologies. The upper gallery showcased works that demonstrated how surroundings and experiences are created using colours.

The most interesting part of the exhibition for me was in the museum's peripheral gallery. Displays explored colour trends and the historical and cultural reasons for choosing a certain colour to represent a particular idea.
I learnt about the 17 different colours of berets that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers wear and the reasons the colours were chosen, above. Initially, most soldiers wore olive-green berets. Over time, however, different colours came to be identified with different military corps and brigades. For instance, the colour red was chosen for the berets worn by paratroopers, since it is identified with paratrooper units worldwide; brown is the colour of the berets worn by Golani soldiers, representing a connection to the earth and to roots; the green colour of the Nahal beret represents the brigade's affinity with agriculture and settlement building; until 2000, the artillery corps wore black berets. It was then decided to change the colour to turquoise, symbolizing the sky that the artillery passes through, and thus strengthening the soldiers' sense of pride. And what about the purple beret worn by Givati soldiers? The Hebrew word for purple, sagol, is associated with violet flowers, sigaliyot (violets). It is also related to the brigade's motto, which contains the word segula (select, chosen), sharing same root with the word sagol.

Another display showed pigments produced from soil samples from the Ramon Crater mixed into white clay, above, highlighting the crater's profusion of natural earth tones, which vary from intense orange to deep purple.

The team colours of the Israeli football clubs have relevance too. The colour red has been identified with Hapoel Tel Aviv since its foundation in 1926, above. The club's crest features a figure throwing an iron ball alongside the Soviet hammer and sickle, which represented the working class. The blood shed as part of the struggle for workers' rights was symbolized by the colour red as a representation of self-sacrifice, courage, rebellion and freedom. By contrast, the yellow colour of the Maccabi Tel Aviv kit came to be associated with the team only in 1942, when it was chosen as a means of identification with the European Jews persecuted by the Nazis and forced to wear the Yellow Star. 

The Flag of all Flags project, above, was displayed at the entrance to the museum's upper gallery. The flag is a composition of various flat shapes, symbols and colours that forms one playful and vibrant flag - a flag of visual optimism. Recognizing how flags are often used for bad purposes, generating an "us vs. them" sentiment, this flag was created aims to unite rather than divide. It has a little bit of everything in it!

* This post has been shared on The Good. The Random. The Fun., Busy Monday, Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), Tuesday Turn About and Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop.

"The Ball", Design Museum of Holon

I first blogged about the Design Museum in Holon back in 2011, when it was a little over a year old. I have been back to see other exhibitions there over the years and recently was lucky enough to catch their current exhibition "The Ball", which is dedicated to Israel's evening and bridal gowns fashion industry. It features some 120 ball gowns representing both historical and contemporary designs, and some 50 accessories created especially for the exhibition by Israel's top designers.

The exhibition is divided into four sections. We began our visit in the Lower Gallery of the museum where a historical timeline of garments, "Re-sewing the History of the Ball", featured reconstructions of historical pieces. Designed with historical accuracy by the costume historian and creator Moni Mednik, the all white cotton muslin garments demonstrated the changes in the design of ball gowns and evening wear as they evolved from the 18th century, through the world wars, the Great Depression and up to the 80s.

We moved on to "The Whipping Room and the Mad Hatter", a stunning installation which brought together the works of the hatter Maor Zabar and the pastry chef Alon Shabo. The exhibition was intended as a playful look at the desserts that added a sweet touch to the balls. On display were 23 towers consisting of about 6,500 macaroons, 122 wedding cakes, tiered cakes and personal desserts, hand-sculpted from 500 kilos of sugar, almond powder, as well as cement and Styrofoam! All the dessert sculptures on display were handmade over 1,000 hours.

Zabar's hats were all handmade and inspired by desserts such as a toffee apples, Black Forest gâteau and candyfloss. A fashion designer by training, Zabar used unconventional materials, extreme proportions and angles that challenge gravity in the design of the 15 hats exhibited. They combined humour with surrealism and were a delight to see!

Next we took a look at the section of the exhibition called "Heart of Glass: A Journey in the Footsteps of Cinderella's Slippers". As Cinderella learned, the "look" can't be complete without shoes. A collaboration with Formlabs, which specialises in 3D printing, this section took us on a tour of various cultural incarnations of the Cinderella shoe, from 9th century China to thoughts of futuristic Cinderellas. The process of creating each shoe included sculpture, printing that lasted about 12 hours, dipping the shoe in alcohol and sanding with a manual finish, which gave it the glass look.

The Margalit Gallery displayed the work "11:59PM" by Idit Barak, which brought together ball gowns familiar from fairy tales using 10,000 metres of fibre optics, below. The thousands of lights glimmering in the darkness formed the silhouette of an opulent ball gown.

Then we went upstairs, to the Upper Gallery of the Design Museum, where "The Modern Ball: Israeli Couture" was on display. This section of the exhibition offered a glimpse into Israel's evening-wear industry through bridal gowns and evening gowns made by leading designers in the country. The curator of the exhibition, Yaara Keydar, wanted to show that the ball is no longer limited to Europe. It was important for her to include the Israeli perspective on proms and balls as well.

Lihi Hod, Shlomi Anteby, Maya Naé, "If You Will It, It Is A Fairy Tale."

The 82 dresses on display show the scope of the industry in Israel, which is at international standards. Even though we are in the Middle East, you could clearly see European history through the dresses, through puffed sleeves, crinoline and corsets. Highlights included dresses designed by Alon Livne and worn by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and a dress sewn from 15,000 old Israeli coins designed by Shai Shalom. Other striking designs included the Israeli musician Ninet Tayeb's wedding dress, designed by Victor Vivi Bellaish and Gadi Elimelech, colourful tulle dresses designed by Shahar Avnet, a digitally printed wedding dress designed by Lihi Hod, as well as a modest, ultra-Orthodox gown by Brurya Haritan.

The opening of the exhibition was postponed several times due to the pandemic. It finally opened in July but was definitely worth the wait! The design and colour of the displays were such a treat and I especially loved Maor Zabar's dessert hats.

"The Ball" is on display at the Design Museum Holon until December 11th.​​

* This post has been shared on Chic & Stylish Linkup, Curated by Jennifer, Jersey Girl, Texan Heart, Little Things Thursday, Top of the World Style linkup, Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), Our World Tuesday, Tuesday's Treasures, My Corner of the World and Sharon's Souvenirs.