Ultra-Orthodox scene bursting with kosher fashion
Young Israeli ultra-Orthodox fashion designers prove that a woman can dress stylishly, even within limits of religious modesty.
"Ultra-Orthodox fashion" almost sounds like an oxymoron to a common secular person like me. Secular people are aware of ultra-Orthodox women’s wear mostly in the context of the full-body coverage of especially strict streams of Orthodoxy. Even then the term “fashion” seems to not quite fit the huge swaths of fabric meant to cover as much as possible and to hide the figure, and nothing more. In a world where the highest value is modesty, it seems perhaps impossible to dress nicely and attractively.
But in the past several years a new trend has surfaced: The ultra-Orthodox community is opening up (relatively, of course) to the modern world — except for the extreme sects — and quite a few ultra-Orthodox fashion designers have taken up the challenge.
"At one time there really wasn't much style," says Avigail Lorenzi, a 21-year-old designer for the religious and ultra-Orthodox sects. “It was important only to dress modestly, and it didn’t matter how you looked. Today it’s also important to look good, and to do so you don’t have to wear tight or sexy clothes.”
"There's nothing in the Torah or in Jewish law that says that the modest clothes that a woman wears can't be dazzling and elegant," says Chana Marelus, the owner of an especially prominent brand of bridal and evening gowns.
