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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Embroidering Palestine, an interview with Fatima Abbadi and Rachel Dedman
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- [00:01]
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April Callahan
The History of fashion is a production of dress media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
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Cassie Zachary
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, fashion historians and your
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Podcast Host/Producer
hosts, Cassie Zachary and April Callahan
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April Callahan
Cass.
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Podcast Host/Producer
Now entering season nine of the podcast,
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April Callahan
I think it's fair to say that
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Podcast Host/Producer
over the course of the last 575 episodes of Dressed, we have always been committed to investigating fashion and dress traditions throughout history and around the world and how we dress our bodies each and every day. Really is this outward expression of our identities and cultural affiliations. Which is why today I'm so, so pleased to have the opportunity to chat to two of the leading experts on the Palestinian art of tatrees.
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Cassie Zachary
The Arabic word for embroidery, tatris, is a form of both embellishment and communication that dates back centuries and in 2021 was recognized by UNESCO as a unique form of cultural heritage. Frequently executed in cross stitch, Tetris is not only a beautiful addition to women's thobes or dresses, but it can also serve as a symbolic device for the creator and or wearer's memories. So color and motif patterns become a record of one's marital status, familial associations, and even the region or town in which the rarer resides.
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Podcast Host/Producer
We love decoding the language of fashion undressed, which is why I was very excited to learn that MoMU, the Fashion Museum of Antwerp, currently has on view the exhibition Embroidering Palestine, which explores the history of tatteries in Palestine from the 19th century up until today.
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Cassie Zachary
We are so pleased to have not one, but two guests today join us to speak about the art and history of tatris. Artist, maker and teacher of Palestinian embroidery Fatima Abadi joins MOMU guest curator Rachel Dedman to speak to us about Tatris at large and also Momu's exhibition, which is on view now until June 7, 2026. Fatima Rachel, thank you again for joining us today to share a bit about Tatris, which has been an incredible form of bonding and communication for generations of Palestinian women. And not necessarily isolated to Palestine, but the broader region. As politics have really reshaped the map in the last 75 years or so, Fashion and dress traditions rarely respect strict international borders and flow like water, connecting neighborhood communities and cultures, regardless of politics.
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Podcast Host/Producer
Ladies, a very warm welcome to Dressed.
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Rachel Dedman
Thank you so much for having us.
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Fatima Abadi
Oh, thank you.
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April Callahan
Thank you for being here. I'm super delighted that you are both joining us today for a whole host of reasons. I think some of those will become apparent a little later in our conversation. But when I first learned that MOMO was doing an exhibition on Palestinian dress and also embroidery traditions, I literally slapped it immediately on my computer as a post it note to fast track this episode so we could feature it as soon as we possibly could on our ninth season of Dressed. Because your exhibition is only up for another few months, so I wanted to get to this. But before we get to our subject at hand today, I'm hoping that you can both introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to your respective specialties and expertise in Palestinian dress and embroidery. So I will invite either of you to go first.
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Rachel Dedman
Maybe I can start. Firstly, thank you again for having us and I love the post IT slapped. It's wonderful we can share this while the show is open in case listeners in Antwerp or elsewhere locally in Europe can get to see it. I'm Rachel Dedman. I'm a curator and a writer. I'm based in London. I'm currently the curator of Contemporary art from the Middle east at the Victorian Albert Museum. But I also have an independent practice and I use both those roles. I'm very fortunate to be able to work on Palestinian embroidery and dress fashion and material culture as part of that. And so I'm the curator of embroidery Palestine at Molu, and my journey started in this subject. Gosh, 13 years ago. It was 2013. I was living and working in Beirut, where I was based for many years in Lebanon, working as an independent curator for a host of museums and organizations and artists. And one museum I worked for a number of years was the Palestinian Museum in the west bank in Brazil. Before they were even open, they were thinking about what a museum for the Palestinian people could be transnationally commissioned me to work on an exhibition about Tatuis in Lebanon. And that, little did I know at the time would start this. Well, it's been more than a decade now of exhibition making and research, curatorial practice, writing and publishing that I consider the most enormous honor and privilege. And yeah, Embroidering Palestine at MOMU is the sort of latest in this series of shows. I've had the pleasure of that job.
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April Callahan
And Fatima.
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Fatima Abadi
Yeah, it's nice to hear also Rachel's story because I always used to read it from books. Now seeing her also live with us in the Kali makes it really very nice. But yeah, I started, let's say as a photographer 20 years ago with a project about Latrice where I was documenting Palestinian embroidery in the streets of Amman and in the Middle East. Well, I forgot to say that I'm based in the Netherlands at the moment, but I've been living in different countries. I'm half Palestinian, half Italian, Jordanian, so it's a lot of mix. And Palestinian embroidery is part of my identity. And that is how I also started with photographing because I was fascinated with these dresses and slowly, slowly seeing every time people dressing the traditional dress less and less on my visits to, to Jordan. So that is how I started basically. But then it mutated into lots of artistic forms because okay, as a Palestinian I know how to embroider and that was easy for me. But I was very curious to understand more because back then When I started 20 years ago, you had a few books that you could consult or know about still. Tira center, which is a museum, the biggest museum of Arab dresses in Amman, was still not there. But I knew that there was this woman called Virat Kawar. And for me this was all the start of all what I'm doing today. So I, I visited her at her home with all my photographs and I started asking, what's these dresses? Can you please explain to me? And then she opened her collection. And that is how I dived into the collection in a non academic way. But really I was very curious. And from there it started this passion for embroidery, the passion to know more about embroidery. But back then also back in Italy, during my stay in Italy, I was a lot involved into activism and working with women, with refugee women. And for me it was easy to pick up embroidery and it was a language that I could connect and communicate with these women and understand their struggle and in a way also to empower them. It all started from a photograph and then my meetups with. And then knowing more the history behind the dresses. And now I run a school in the Netherlands since seven years, almost where I teach embroidery. Only Palestinian, mainly Palestinian embroidery. But the purpose is not only Palestinian embroidery. The purpose is to connect with the women and foster our culture together. And that is how then the connection came with the exhibition. And Momo, that's amazing.
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April Callahan
And also, too, such, literally a historic connection of how women have connected to each other through centuries. Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Rachel Dedman
I was going to add, actually listening to Fatima's story, that there is something so unique about Portuguese and Palestinian dress, not only in how it's made. Right. It operates itself a language as much as a crowd. What women put on their bodies reflected their identity and their origins, but in how that craft has lived through centuries and been passed down is this reflection of incredible matrilineal knowledge. And hearing you, you know, I also spent many weeks at the foot of Widad Kawar, learning from her, learnings from Malik the Rahim, learning from Maha Abashe, but visiting often females. They're not uniquely collectors and experts who would throw open their cupboards full of dresses, but also their minds and their knowledge. And it feels like we stand on the shoulders of women when we do this kind of work. And that oral history in which Tatini lives and continues to fit is so much part of its magic. Yeah.
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April Callahan
One thing that we have not yet done is define this term tetris. So might one of you want to take that on and tell us a little bit about how it is learned and then how it is practiced?
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Fatima Abadi
Maybe I can say that tatris is an Arabic word for embroidery. Simply. It's like when you say embroidery, it's tatriz. So it's not just a Palestinian word. It's an Arabic word that says. That explains the meaning of embroidery. And embroidery, like, you know, it's a practice that has been, I think, a universal practice in womanhood. But in the Palestinian, let's say, culture, it's always been passed down from mothers to daughters. So usually in the afternoon, historically, after working in the fields, women would sit together. Children, girls, grandmothers, and everybody know, in the circle, in the courtyard or at home and in brothers together. And until now, it's like if you practice embroidery or tatris together, like in refugee camps or at schools, it's always sitting together and embroidering. And it's in some way the same thing that I do also at the school, we gather women and it comes naturally to sit together to share stories, because this is how Tatris is done. Embroidery is done, Rachel said. It's an identity. So it comes natural to sit together, to talk about our culture, our food, to embroidery.
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April Callahan
And this is something that is like a storyline throughout the exhibition itself. So, Rachel, I'm hoping that you might tell us a little bit about the concept behind the exhibition that is currently on view at momu and some of the themes that it explores.
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Rachel Dedman
Yeah. So the exhibition celebrates and explores, Gosh, about 150 years of Palestinian dress and fashion. That historical heyday in the late 19th century that Fatima was describing, the origins of potter's, or the practice, all the way through to its kind of contemporary life in the hands of makers today. And the way that the show is structured is that it unfolds thematically, so over four main themes through the lenses of nature, splendor, power and change. And each of these was intended to immerse the visitor in some of the fascinating nuances and complexities and dynamics in which Tatris was created, both then and now. So nature is thinking about this deep connection that Palestinian dress has always had with the land. Just as Fatima Sardis was traditionally very much a rural woman craft, this was connected to women's lives in agriculture and of designs of your dress, the fall of the motif, the dye stuff used. All of these reflect this kind of imprecation with the land and the natural world in splendor. I really just wanted to celebrate the kind of extraordinary craftsmanship and the sheer beauty of some of this material. Not only embroidery, but textiles and jewelry, head dresses laden with. Coined, like Drenched with beef, Mother of Pearl, by Bethlehem Artisan. It's really an opportunity to just explore and have your mouth gape open at how extraordinary these things are. And then the exhibition, of course, is engaging throughout with the political history of Palestine, with a decade of occupation since 48, but before that, you know, centuries of colonization, colonialism, change. How has political and economics change in Palestine manifested on dress? And how has the emotional life of women, you know, their experience of grief or motherhood or marriage and maturity, childhood, these moments, these rites of passage, how do they get expressed on clothing? In different ways. And then in power, we're thinking both about the sort of talismanic power, the amuletic power of embroidery to protect or affect the body, but then also the ways in which tatris and other textiles in Palestine, things like the keffiyeh, have been involved in political resistance, practice and in acts of solidarity. How does the craft remain a form of solidarity and activism in the present, too? So, yeah, Running through all of that, of course, is the work of contemporary designers and makers who take their traditions and innovate and extend them. Show us. Give us new visions for the future of Palestinian fashion. Yeah, yeah.
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April Callahan
This is a through line of our show in all of our episodes for nine years now, that fashion is inherently political. You cannot divorce the way that we dress our bodies in terms of identifying ourselves externally and also the exchange of money without also interweaving that with politics.
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Rachel Dedman
It just is.
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April Callahan
And it has been like that for centuries, if not millennia. Okay, so, Fatimah, you are a maker, and you have also been very much involved in the educational aspects of the exhibition, if I understand correctly.
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Rachel Dedman
Yep.
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April Callahan
Please correct me if I am wrong. Would you tell us a little bit about how you have been engaging with the visitors to momu? How has your work intersected with the exhibition itself?
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Fatima Abadi
The combination between the workshop and the exhibition is really something unique of its kind. Was having an exhibition at that level, and then you just jump in the front door, you know, and then you say, oh, there's a free workshop. Let me go and see what's happening in. And then you find out, oh, again, it's Palestinian embroidery, or vice versa. Maybe you don't know about Palestinian embroidery. You go first, visit the workshop, you do some patterns, and then. And then you're invited. Okay. Now that you know that you're doing a cypress tree, for example, which is a typical motif from Palestinian embroidery. And then you go to the exhibition, then you get out speechless, you know, And I think this is unique of its kind because really, I've seen, for example, yesterday, an old man going to the exhibition with a book of Palestinian costumes from Sheila Wir. And he was there with the book in the exhibition, trying to see the dresses and try to match what's in that.
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Rachel Dedman
In.
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Fatima Abadi
In the book with the dress over there and reading. And then he came to me and he said, oh, my God, I always had this book since 30, 40 years. And this is the first time I see the Bethlehem dresses over there. I see the caps and I see the shawls. He was, like, almost crying with this book that he brought us from home on purpose and trying to see, oh, this is what I've been seeing in a book. But now I see it real in a mannequin dimension, and I. Human dimension, the dresses. And this really touched me a lot. So that's why I'm so enthusiastic about this exhibition, because it really touches you. Or, for example, I have women that also came. They took pictures of motifs in the dresses Especially couch stitching, which is a technique, a particular technique different from the cross stitch. And she wanted to give a contribution in the. In the pieces that we are producing, because now we are producing six curtains for the mong, where each curtain is a representation of something. So it's also a political act because people use colors to identify things that are happening, for example, around the world. Symbols of kufiyeh, for example, but also about Iran, about Kurdistan, about lots of things. And people are also putting kuipers, poetry, words. And it is so touching. So when I see all these things happening and going up, I say, yes, fashion is politics, and it's beautiful to see it live, how it's taking shape.
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April Callahan
I am so glad that you brought this up, because one of the things that I have always loved so deeply about textile design, being a fashion historian, is how women throughout history and around the world have used motifs on fabric, whether they're woven or whether they're embellished as a form of communication. So like in Africa, Ankara, or wax prints, Dutch wax prints might have motifs that would call out a cheating husband or Japanese kimono, were often color coded specifically for your station status and the season. And likewise, all of these amazing motifs, as you referenced, the colors that are used are a form of communication. They communicate something about not only the practitioner of the art, but also the wearer. So I would love if both of you would delve into this a little bit more.
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Rachel Dedman
Maybe I can start by making this link with the political. Because it's so interesting to hear, Fatima, that the curtains, which, of course, this project was planned before the current situation in the region unfolded, at least at this most intense moment. We were recording this in March, that we didn't necessarily imagine that it would be a space for everything happening now. But of course it is. You know, exactly as you said, April, textile becomes a space where people can channel their emotion, their rage, their grief, their feelings, and find a way of kind of articulating them collectively in the most sort of cathartic sense. It reminds me of the Intifada dresses that are in the exhibition itself. Maybe you talk about this with your participants, Fatima, because those are dresses made, in this case, in the ones we're showing at Momu, maybe during, but possibly following the first intifada at the end of the 1980s, early 90s, which was a period of uprising in the west bank and Gaza against the Israeli occupation, where you see both the kind of traditional vocabulary of motifs being transformed into forms of resistance and a new vocabulary, in a way, coming to the Fore, we have one beautiful dress that slingshots and kefir around their head, the growing stones against this kind of bigger power. And then in the case in front of it, we're showing a historic slingshot used by shekers in Palestine from the 19th century century, and a contemporary design by IHM Hassan that uses elastic band slingshots from his childhood in Ramallah. So there's this kind of legacy of resistance that is explored in the show that I love to hear is continuing outside it. And color on those particular dresses is really important because they're made during the Intifada, have powered the national colors of Palestine. Right. The colors we associate with the flag today in a really strong way. But there are colors in the historical material that I think reflect more either sort of connections to the land. Right. The presence of local dyestaffs, whether it's madder, cochineal, kermes, bo reds or indigo on the beautiful linen and cotton based fabrics for dresses that you see really throughout Palestine. But color also indeed reflects somebody's sort of identity in emotional terms or in terms of their moment, their place in life. I mentioned grief before, the color associated with grief and with youth. Young women, especially in the Bedouin context, would embroider with blues before they were married. And older women might return to a kind of sparser blue, embroidered and dyed dress in older age, so that the vibrancy of color on traditional tatrice became reflective of a woman who was married, who was a mother, who is in that sort of prime of life or had gone through that rite of passage of the wedding in which Tatri played such a central role. I could wax lyrical about color, but those are two ideas connected somehow across the show.
- [22:33]
Fatima Abadi
Yeah, but the same color palette, I would say it's with the same message. The same essence is used in the curtains. And you see, it is something that is in our background. I don't know if it's in the Middle Eastern background or it's in people's language. There were some women who used Afghan colors to embroider some motifs because they have never seen their color, their lands. And then they came as refugees and then they felt that they had to leave something. Or like the slingshot, there was a person who took a picture of that element from that dress from the momu and reproduced it in the curtain along with other symbols from the Intifada dress. But it's full of these examples in the curtains that, like, unintentionally, they did the same code language, but without me telling nothing. I was just There instructing people what to do. Just go and visit the museum, the collection and then come back and then what you feel, try to reproduce it in the, in the curtain. And that's the, that's, that's the same language code.
- [23:37]
April Callahan
Yeah.
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Podcast Host/Producer
Also too, in terms of color, historically
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April Callahan
speaking, going back a little bit into the past, color sometimes was a regional reference. If I am correct. Is that true? Like the specific shades that they would use within the embroidery were a reference to where the practitioner or maybe where the wearer was from.
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Rachel Dedman
That's true. Traditionally, women would. You would have your base fabrics often dyed in urban centers and dyeing centers because it's a more industrial, semi industrial process. But women used to dye their threads, the floss silk used for their actual embroidery thread at home by themselves or in more localized sort of village context at a smaller scale. And what that means of course is that if you're hand dying thread, you know, you're not a machine, your thread is going to come out slightly different every time. And red is the primary color associated with Palestine with the greens. There are lots of other colors involved, but red really is almost a universal. And on historic dresses, 19th century swords, we find maybe 10 different shades of red on a single garment. Where these different dye stuffs have taken in the dug and then at a certain period. And this is explored in this section on change in the exhibition. You have the presence of mechanically dyed thread enter the market in Palestine. So DMC Dolphus Niegenti, I'm sure your listeners will know all about them. They're still the biggest threaded copy in the world today. Embroidered globally in DMC bread entered the Palestinian market in 2013 and started selling pre dyed thread, often in pearl cot rather than silk cloth, which you could buy. And this on the one hand, there were really fascinating effects by this because of course on the one hand you'd have this colonial change, right? An external European company arriving in the market during the British mandate period when the British had control of Palestine with the colonizers changing the economic landscape of the country. But. And you have this sort of end up eroding this beautiful traditional practice of hand dyed red. On the other hand, you find it also embeds in a way a sense of regional specificity. Because something we've not said yet, which is so remarkable about Palestinian Patri is that each village had really their own approach to dress. Even neighboring villages down the road from one another in Stay's term, might have quite distinct approaches to their motifs and their designs and their textiles of their dress. And when DMC thread entered the market, what you found is that different villagers started to adopt a shade of red that became theirs. So shade, I don't know, 249red belonged to Ramallah, whereas 254 was Eldiri versus I don't know, Ankinga had something else and so on and so forth, to the point that decades later, Palestinians in diaspora in Jordan maybe could go to a haberdasher that had been exiled from Palestine, set up there, and could be given the correct quote, unquote, shade of thread for her natal village based purely on the name of it. So there's this beautiful sort of continuation of that specificity and that regional link through something that of course changed a historic practice at the same time. So there's all these nuances, I think, that I'm always trying to explore anyway, when looking at historical change, what ended and what started. Yeah, I want, in April 8 thought, something that. Like that you said something about me that I think is so important and beautiful, which is that women were also eager for novelty. Right. They were thinking about what was new. I think sometimes, and I work at a big museum with a historical collection, I try not to be like this. But sometimes there's a tendency to think about dress, historic dress, ethnographically, as though it isn't fashion. And I'm always really keen to frame Palestinian dress and Tatvi's as fashion, because I think it was women were looking at each other, they were looking at what was new. DNC was circulating pattern books with their thread.
- [27:58]
Fatima Abadi
Yes.
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Rachel Dedman
And waist canvas for the first time. These things that were enabling women to embroider on a wider range of fabrics, look to European motifs or other traditions. The Quakers in Rwola bought tradition, embroidery traditions from the US and from Britain. So these. It's not that I understand why today, of course, we want to respect the sort of Palestinian ness of it all, but understanding that women were also always looking to extend or evolve or innovate. The work that they were doing, I think, is part of the story as well.
- [28:33]
April Callahan
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- [28:52]
Podcast Host/Producer
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April Callahan
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April Callahan
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- [31:22]
April Callahan
So our regular listeners will know that one of my special interests as a fashion historian has long been the intersection of war and fashion and how the exigencies of war have also at the same time been used as forms of political resistance. So these years after World War I and World War II were periods of extreme destabilization for Palestinians would maybe one or both of you give us a little bit of a global insight into the mechanizations that were at play in around 1918 and also around 1947? Because I think this frames things nicely for us in how dress was inherently political, that we're talking about 400 years of history, really, if we want to go all the way back to the 16th century.
- [32:17]
Rachel Dedman
Absolutely. And yeah, colonialism then too. Right. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1516. And then, as you said, when the Ottoman Empire fell at the end of the First World War, following the Slice Picot Agreement, France and Britain had colonial power and divvied up control in the region as countries took liberty doing then. And so from sort of 1917, 18 in practice, although technically 1920 on paper, Britain had the mandate for Palestine and was in political control. The 1920s and 30s was indeed a period of unrest and conflict because of course, Palestine has forever been a super diverse, multi ethnic, multicultural society. It's the birthplace of major religions. There are communities from all over the world and from different faiths living very peacefully for centuries in one place. The 1920s and 30s saw increasing Zionist immigration to Palestine, Jewish immigration under the sort of banner of Zionism and its ideology. And that increased in the 30s or following the end of the. Or during the Second World War as a result of Jewish persecution in Europe. And then in 1947, 1948, the British decided to hand off the mess they had created. The British are very much involved and complicit in the. In all of this history because the Balfour Declaration supported publicly the Zionist Project and. And then this laid the way for the Mecburg, 1947, 49, roughly. 48 is the date we tend to use. Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic. And it marks this period which wasn't one moment, but several years of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias, then Israeli military in those early moments post the foundation of the State of Israel, when 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their home, moved out of Palestine, fled for their lives. Many were killed in the process. And those who remained, of course, found themselves under a new reality of occupation. Sorry if that's a bit long, but that gives you the kind of. Yeah, I mean, it's long and it's short at the same time. Obviously it doesn't do it justice. But that. Yeah, in a way that violent history in that particular moment or period. Fatima.
- [34:46]
Fatima Abadi
No, I think you framed it correctly, Amy. Nothing can be added. Yeah, from the neck, but then that's a Shifting point onwards for also the Palestinian dress, because it took a different shape, a different shift. Women found themselves sitting all together in refugee camps. And that is where also the traditional or the historical dress that we see it nowadays in the museum, the collections stopped existing, and the new form, a new language, also started taking shape of Palestinian embroidery, which is the post Nakba dress, which is all these motifs all mixed together. Women found themselves all from different areas, from Palestine, sitting together. They started copying also motifs from each other. And that was the birth moment of before the Intifada dress, this sort of after Nakba dress, which is this universal Palestinian dress, that you can recognize it from the shape of the chest panel, from the side panels. So what was historically stopped existing thing and stopped reproducing. And now you have a sort of a new form of Palestinian unique dress. Let's call it like this, maybe with. With specific shape and without specific region that you could identify it before. Because before, for example, you would identify, okay, historically, this woman came from Ramallah, from Bethlehem and et cetera. But that is called, like the refugee
- [36:11]
Rachel Dedman
dress or the actress or the camp dress.
- [36:15]
Fatima Abadi
Yeah, the camp.
- [36:17]
Rachel Dedman
A period, Those decades, post 48, of course, women are still making their dresses, as Ferdinand says. But it's also a moment when embroidery shifts it from a labor of love to labor. As embroidery, tatris becomes something that women are doing for their economic empowerment, for their livelihood. Organizations like in Ash Al Usra in Palestine or in Ash al Mukhayyem in Lebanon. There are many others are set up to support women in this period, to support whole families. And embroidery then becomes a job, a different way of earning for a family and of getting through this particularly difficult time in their lives. And that, I think that moment is really important because it's also part and parcel of a shift that tatris takes on more symbolically, whereby the 448, this was a practice of rural women. It was something done by the falaheen, those who lived in the countryside, whereas the political ruling elite in Palestine were men and women of the middle and upper classes who never wore tatris, right, who wore a European dress or Ottoman dress. And it was in that in the decades post nakba, particularly in the 70s and 80s onwards, that you have tatris begin to be taken up as this sort of stuff, symbol of nationhood, and as a sign, part of a kind of vocabulary of nationalism, part of a revival of heritage pushed for and encouraged by the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a way of asserting identity, of asserting connection to the land of Asserting sovereignty in this place and as evidence of women, of people's existence in this place. And so then Tatris, in a way, goes on a journey in the hands of artists and designers, becoming something that features in paintings and posters, in traveling exhibitions, and has this new life. So those two things together, embroidery and flavor and embroidery as symbol, I think, coexist in a really interesting way, but sort of eventually bring us to today the way that we think about tutories of the symbol of resistance.
- [38:26]
April Callahan
Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought up 1948, because I was super interested to learn that there were touring exhibitions of tattoos in galleries and museums around the world at this point. Might one of you tell us a little bit more about that?
- [38:42]
Rachel Dedman
Totally. It wasn't in 48. I should be clear about that a little bit later. Okay, so this was in the 70s. It was when the PLO. So the PLO had an arts and crafts unit that was run by Ismail Chamood and his wife, Tamam Al Afal, who was herself. They are both amazing artists in their own right. And then we interviewed the man for a previous show I did, and she shared her archive. And it was indeed fascinating because the PLO would circulate these exhibitions of Palestinian embroidery and dress and other arts and crafts, mother of pearl and olive wood and wonderful traditional objects, and send them out across the world basically to place more what we might term like hard political events were happening and the exhibitions were sort of. Of sort soft, political power in action. So I don't know, Yasser Arafat goes and meets the king of Spain. And as a backdrop to this high profile political meeting, there is this exhibition that happens, or a group of girls, Palestinian girls dance. Deb Kit in Palestinian dress, or an embroidered sword is given as a gift to the Queen of Spain or something. So dress is operating absolutely in an exhibition context that takes it off the body and into a space of kind of history and heritage. But it's animating it in this new context. Right. Again, as something that is part of advocating for and asserting Palestinian rights and statehood and historic identity. And indeed, it's doing that decades before. You tend to see this kind of thing in major exhibitions in the West. They went to Japan, they went to East Germany, they went really all over. And I love the idea that Palestinian dress was traveling the world in this way.
- [40:27]
April Callahan
And now at Momo and it's contemporary expressions as well. Batchama, as a contemporary practitioner of Tatris, I would love to know if you have some thoughts on or favorites from some of the more contemporary designers that are featured in the exhibition, I like
- [40:47]
Fatima Abadi
a lot Zayd Hijazi. That is the best for me because like I got a lot connected with his, his, his fashion and the way he proposed fashion. That is something really. And I found it very similar with what we do usually also at the school because we try also to put the trees in new forms or new modern fashion ways, try to experiment on different type of fabrics. So what I saw before that I did not know him. So that was a decision discovery also. So I really love that, that artist a lot.
- [41:24]
Rachel Dedman
Yeah, maybe I shouldn't add, but some of your listeners, April, may know Zayd because he kind of went viral recently because beautiful first woman of New York, Grandma Duazi wore a Zayd top to the. Sorry, I don't know the right name for the swearing in ceremony of a few months ago. And it is incredible. He's someone I've worked with a great deal in my work and at the DNA, commissioned pieces and acquired his works for our collection and in the exhibition. Maybe to paint you a bit of a picture, this is from a body of work that Zaid has been doing inspired by a film called Bedouin Hacker, which is about a protagonist called Carltonizia who hacks the airwaves, the radio waves to broadcast messages of resistance. And for Zaid, this idea of hacking and patrize as both being kinds of code, the forms of secret communication among women, had this incredible power. And so he's drawing on images of strength, right. The kind of couture nature. He's an incredible tailor of the garment and the look is amazing. But he's also thinking explicitly in the piece we're showing at MOMU about the talismanic. And it's next to a traditional Gaza dress that has this necked neckline that served as a sort of protective purpose for the women who wore it 100 years ago. And then next to it, Zayd is himself looking at contemporary amulets and the power of clothing on the body. So them side by side. I'm so glad you love it.
- [43:15]
Dan Beecher
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- [44:19]
April Callahan
You just brought up something that we have not even touched on, which as some of these motifs in tatrees are actually apotropaic symbols or they serve an apotropaic function. Fatimah, would you like to talk about that a little bit?
- [44:36]
Fatima Abadi
It's a language, it's a vocabulary. So all the motifs, you have them over there. It's not like arranged coincidentally. For example, if you see also the cypress tree, you have several forms of cypress trees all through all different areas in Palestine. And we're talking here about the historical dresses and not the dresses that are after the neck. But the same thing goes, you know, talismanic and protective symbols. They have this sort of necklace embroidered, because you can also have an embroidered necklace shape motif. Instead of wearing a necklace by itself, like in Jaffa, you have the oranges. And so it is all about symbols and meanings. And in addition to that, also colors play an important role. So it goes hand in hand, colors and motifs. So it's a living encyclopedia. It's an ID card of the wearer from where she comes and what she wants and what she likes. Also that what also makes it very unique of its kind, the Palestinian embroidery.
- [45:34]
Rachel Dedman
Yeah.
- [45:35]
Fatima Abadi
I don't know if Rachel wants also to add something on that.
- [45:39]
Rachel Dedman
No, I think that's perfectly put, maybe just to add that the apotropaic power of the Tringhus was matched, as you said, in jewelry. So we're also showing some wonderful amulets that were worn on the body and were again used to protect the wearer. And what I think is so powerful about those also is that they weren't necessarily. It was something that transcended the religion. You know, you could find your local sheikh or priest or rabbi. It didn't really matter what religion you were to to maybe write a little piece of paper or something that you would roll up inside an amulet and wear on your body. And the holiness of that person or the perceivedness of that person is what gave this thing power, not religion itself. And Somehow in a context where religion has been so weaponized in this particular place, when it's really not about that at the heart of the conflict, it's so important to remember that Tatris was practiced by Muslim Palestinians, by Christian Palestinians, by Jewish Palestinians, by Durazi Palestinians, and that you have this real wealth of shared community in a single place that doesn't even map on to these sort of ideological, religious line that we might think of in Palestine today.
- [46:55]
April Callahan
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. This raises the question, where is the state of Tatris today, given the unfathomable devastation that has occurred and how can we support those artists?
- [47:14]
Fatima Abadi
I think that Tatris is, especially after the 7th of October has gained popularity and it's more of a statement, more than, you know, of an identity. Everyone wants something about Tatris or wants to have something also. We see, like the watermelon shape, it became also into Tatris. Lots of objects became into Tatris. And I think the popularity is growing. And itself Tatris, the word also is getting awareness now. Everybody knows this Arabic word called Tatris. And everybody wants to do a workshop to know better what is Palestine through Tatris, maybe through art, maybe through paintings. It could be maybe a little bit difficult. Fashion designers may be a bit difficult, but embroidery, everyone at least wants to practice the stitch. So it is very popular. At least I see it here in North Europe where I give my workshops. Or I see also how people are approaching to this craft. But also in Italy, the same thing with exhibitions. Everybody wants to know about Palestine in this artistic form, which is embroidery. That was not the case, I think, 10 years ago, for example, it was more hidden or maybe a niche when you would talk about Palestinian embroidery. People, yeah, okay, we know about it, but also you see it also in the books, people. Everybody wants to buy a book about, about Palestinian tutories to know more about the Palestinian embroidery and Palestine. And I think it's a vehicle that through embroidery you can in some way learn more about the historical part of Palestine and what has happened. Pray Nakba after neck.
- [48:54]
Rachel Dedman
Absolutely I can. I'm still very close to. Because I lived in Moiton, Palestine, close to friends and colleagues there. And my. My colleagues at the Palestinian Museum will still work together on a number of projects. And I know they are in constant contact with colleagues in Gaza who run museums who have had collections totally destroyed. I'm thinking of the Rafah Museum, the Kadara Museum, Burj Abdat Al Khudri Collection, among others, who were targeted very early on. In the genocide, this wasn't something collateral damage. In October 10th, I think it was, Rafah Museum was bombed. So. So there's this. I think we have to remember, or I find it important to remember that the destruction of cultural heritage is part of Israel's architecture of occupation and genocide even before 2023. But especially since it. And I know the teams in Gaza are working incredibly hard to save what they can, to safeguard their collections, to preserve what they're able to. But I think the more that we can do outside to ensure that these histories and the stories of dresses are preserved and held and shared with the world is so important. And I see that in the exhibitions I make or in the events I put on in museums. This exactly as you described, Fatima. A desire to learn, a desire to make that space between you and someone in Palestine, whether it's the west bank, which is also being subject to inordinate violence now over the last few years and the many decades before it, or in Gaza, just the simple act of learning to stitch makes the space between you and a Palestinian person that much smaller. And I'm really, I feel passionate about the fact that looking closely at fashion and dress allows us to unfold a human history of place. We empathize, we gain awareness of a person. We can all relate to clothing. Right. We all wear clothing. I think this is at the core of the podcast too. And everything to do right. But it's so obvious, but it really is so powerful. And so in learning to stitch, having somewhere to come together collectively, it's not necessarily about what you make or finish making. It's about talking communion, connection, that I think we need more and more of today.
- [51:16]
Fatima Abadi
Yeah. And I would also add solidarity, I think, with the Palestinian people, because lots of people, maybe they cannot go to marches or to manifest because for many reasons, but at least sitting together in a circle and stitching something, a motif for Palestine, for them, it means a lot. And this is what they also see at the Momu Museum. People come really to leave a stitch in solidarity with Palestine.
- [51:42]
Rachel Dedman
Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:44]
April Callahan
And I guess maybe I'll direct this to Fatima, but Rachel, please tap into. We're about out of our time today. We're actually a little bit over our allotted time today. But my final question would be specifically to what you were just speaking about, Fatima. Are there specific makers or. Rachel, you were talking about some collectives, perhaps? Are there ways that our audience can help and support right now?
- [52:12]
Fatima Abadi
Makers. I think there is a lot on Instagram or you can find as makers. There's a lot of resources and books that you can find also online that talks about Palestinian embroidery. Back then when I started there were like few that you could count them in hand. And now you can have a vast collection of valuable books that you can really deep dive into the topic about Palestinian history, culture and heritage and Tatris. There is lots of websites like from Full Glory, for example, from Tirazane, from Tatris and T that you can find valuable motifs that you can't, learn the historical aspect of it, learn from where it comes and practice some stitches. There is like sort of guidebooks. So there are lots of things that you can start if you're curious to do Tatriss that you can find in Internet and online courses and. And yeah, and sorts like that. When I started I didn't have all these and Rachel, I remember sending her email I think two decades ago almost. This is how I was so in love with her work. So I said, let me send her an email. That was the only way she did not still publish her first book. So this is. This was back then, 20 years ago almost. But now you have really infinite resources and kits and people that talk about this topic in a broader scale. It's just a matter of searching online where is in which city you are that you could find some courses that you could also experience the on hand experience. Like for example in my case, a person that knows how to embroidery that could guide you through the process. Or also exhibitions play an important role to engage you more and where you can also see the motifs that you're creating, how they historically look. Because very often you would see one motif, for example a cypress tree and okay, I do it, but then how does it look in a dress? That's the purpose also of the collections where you could see it live.
- [54:11]
Rachel Dedman
And if people want to support Palestinian women or those making this and want to buy a bit of Patriz, I recommend looking at sort of some websites that focus on fair trade and paying people. Handmade Palestine is a good resource. Sunbala has incredible products. Folklore, as Fatima said, has wonderful kits and other pieces.
- [54:31]
April Callahan
I have a whole stash of Etatrise bookmarks that I bought about a year and a half ago from Handmade Palestine that whenever I have a friend who's one of us nerdy fellow fashion historians that they deserve a gift, it's their birthday or whatever, they get a little tattoo bookmark.
- [54:49]
Rachel Dedman
I love that I'm addicted to hearing the whole time and because I was when I was first doing my fieldwork on this and for the years I really lived in the region, I was traveling all over Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan, meeting embroidered, meeting women who practiced latris today and interviewing them, getting to know them, and bought a dangerous number of cushions and often took away. So my home is full of it too. It's so beautiful. And it is this kind of direct connection to the history and women of Palestine.
- [55:19]
April Callahan
Yes. This is the danger of becoming an expert in your field, friends.
- [55:23]
Rachel Dedman
A beautiful danger. Yes.
- [55:25]
April Callahan
Yes.
- [55:25]
Fatima Abadi
Yeah.
- [55:27]
April Callahan
Ladies, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your flexibility in turning this episode around very quickly. I wanted to feature this before the exhibition closed as we relaunch space season nine of the podcast. And I don't think I'm actually going to be able to make it to Momo to see the exhibition. But thank you. Thank you so much. This is really beautiful.
- [55:47]
Rachel Dedman
Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
- [55:50]
Fatima Abadi
Thank you.
- [55:51]
Podcast Host/Producer
One of the things I also loved about what Fatima and Rachel shared is how Tetris has always been a matrilineal art form passed down between generation after generation of women as a form of memory keeping and tradition. And it's really this beautiful expression of identity, family and even political resistance.
- [56:12]
Cassie Zachary
The exhibition Embroidering Palestine is on view now through June 7, 2026. If you happen to be in Antwerp the next few weeks, dress listeners. And if you cannot make it, we should also mention that if you would like to learn more about Tatris, you can head to the Tatris Institute, which is run by Wafa Gnaim, and through through that institution she offers online education and classes. And you can learn more about WAAFA's ongoing project@tattreesandtea.com that's T E A as in the hot drink tatreesntea.com I think
- [56:42]
April Callahan
that does it for us today.
- [56:43]
Podcast Host/Producer
Dress listeners, may you consider how your clothing expresses your cultural heritage next time you get dressed. If you'd like to follow along for social media content connecting to this episode, you can do so by searching dressed578. That's dressed578. Please head to restpodcast on Instagram or restpodcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
- [57:13]
Cassie Zachary
And remember, we always love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.com DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses and you can check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [57:32]
Podcast Host/Producer
We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history
- [57:36]
April Callahan
books, so if you are interested you
- [57:38]
Podcast Host/Producer
can always find a link in our
- [57:40]
April Callahan
show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf.
- [57:42]
Podcast Host/Producer
So that address is bookshop.org shop
- [57:48]
Rachel Dedman
and
- [57:48]
Podcast Host/Producer
there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles and do
- [57:53]
Cassie Zachary
you love Dressed but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for ad free listening with any tier on our Dressed History Patreon.
- [58:00]
Podcast Host/Producer
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- [58:24]
Cassie Zachary
Thank you as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media. Want to keep up with everything trendy from breaking news to shareable jokes, pop
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Rachel Dedman
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