2022 - End of the year recap

Dear friends of Adish, As 2022 comes to a close, we wanted to share with you some highlights of what we did this year: The collections that Adish was proud to produce, and the collaborations we were grateful to be a part of.

Our two main collections were the Spring-Summer collection ‘Facing the Forests’ and the Fall-Winter collection, ‘Tears of an Olive Branch’. Both collections dealt with trees; some native to the land and facing destruction, and others foreign, used as a tool of colonization and erasure.

‘Facing the Forests’ centered around the political foresting of Israel/Palestine by the Jewish National Fund, as a tactic of erasure; erasure of the remnants of historic Palestine before 1948 Nakba, as well as present-day attempts at ‘judaizing’ space and stifling of livelihood of bedouin communities in the Naqab. The collection, which included a collaboration with Small Talk studio, featured digitally printed drawings of local animal species on natural woven fabrics, applying garment-dying and stone-washing techniques that drew inspiration from the natural tones and textures of the depopulated Palestinian villages.

‘Tears of an Olive Branch’ was a product of our long-standing relationship with the Lakiya Weaving Workshop in the Naqab, as well as with the Inoue Brothers, and was, for the first time, produced entirely in Palestine. The collection featured traditional Palestinian patterns such as olives, birds and strawberries, embroidered in the Bedouin city of Rahat, as well as olive wood beads made in Ramallah. The collection pays tribute to the olive trees of Palestine, those that were uprooted in the process of colonization and Jewish settlement, and those that continue to symbolize the steadfastness of the Palestinian village and spirit, facing West Bank settler violence on a daily basis.

In addition to our main collections, we were stoked to collaborate with designers and partners on a number of other up-cycling projects:

In May this year, we teamed up with Fred Perry to create a five-piece collection of reworked silhouettes, featuring the brand’s signature pieces. Each piece was sent to occupied Palestine where it was reworked by local craftsmen and women who meticulously cross-stitched traditional Palestinian motifs, in the century-old embroidery technique known as ‘Tatreez’, onto each piece.

In October, we teamed up with Japanese Noma Textile Design, who like Adish, place a lot of emphasis on traditional techniques and artisan handicrafts. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Dover Street Market Ginza, visitors participated in a stamp workshop where they could customize a T-shirt that was made especially for the occasion, with custom-made stamps shaped like Tatreez embroidery patterns.

In November, we partnered with Levi's® and blended iconic Levi's® pieces with traditional Palestinian craft techniques. This first partnership between the two brands was composed of deadstock Levi's® Chore jackets and Original 501®, up-cycled by the application of the Palestinian Tatreez hand embroidery and Bedouin hand-weaving. Each garment was unique and featured patterns reflecting daily life in historic and contemporary Palestine: domestic items, farm animals, olive harvest, and life events such as marriage and mourning. ‏Once again this collection was made possible through our collaboration with the talented Tatreez craftswomen from the occupied Palestinian territories — whom we have been fortunate to be working with since the establishment of our brand — as well as with the Lakiya Weaving Initiative, which serves as an economic empowerment initiative for Bedouin women in the Naqab desert.

For Adish, garments are only part of the story. As part of our strive for building an alternative future, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Fortuna Records in April, with our friends at Teder.fm. The folks at Fortuna are among the rare kind who are passionate about the preservation and re-introduction of sidelined regional cultures. An independent record label based in Tel Aviv, they focus on the reissuing of obscure and forgotten sounds from the Middle East, from Greece to Lebanon, from Israel to Morocco and Iraq. They choose to focus on the forgotten stories, cast aside by hegemonic powers and cultural repression. Both Fortuna and Adish prioritize learning and unlearning the past, and actively engaging with the uncomfortable realities of the present, seeking to pave paths of hope and collaboration across the Middle East.

In June, we held a pop-up fundraiser in Paris where proceeds from 250 up-cycled garments, that were donated by our friends in the designer community, were directly donated to medical aid in Palestine. The non-profit organization that benefited from the funds works across Palestine and especially within refugee camps, providing both immediate medical aid and long-term infrastructural solutions.

And yet, despite these successes and celebrations of beauty and life, we do not forget that 2022 was an especially bloody year in Israel-Palestine. Over two-hundred Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces and settlers, the highest rate in the past seven years. Twenty four Israeli civilians were killed by armed Palestinians. Severe settler violence against Palestinians, backed by state forces, spread like wildfire — the flames fanned by fascist extremists who now hold the power of government. While we acknowledge that Israel’s current most extremist government comes as no surprise, given the decades-long political trajectory — we are still weary of the extreme measures that this government will impose on cultural expression, livelihood of marginalized communities and on human life.

At the close of this year, and at the opening of the next, we extend our prayers to all the mourners and bereaved in Israel and Palestine, and wish that the next year brings more joy, more happiness, more freedom and liberation to Palestine and the entire region. It is in opportunities for reflection such as these, that we are painfully reminded that true safety and freedom for Jews cannot depend on the oppression of others. Only by addressing the wrong and the injustice in our midst can we work toward collective liberation.