Kufiya nails

Kufiya patterned Palestine nails -- take this design to your nail salon lady and you can have them too.

Tehran Street Style

This is a lovely photo album of 'street style' in Tehran. Mostly women. If it's "street," however, it's definitely uptown and not downtown. Here's a sample.

kufiya patterned pants

Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Amal on Pinterest

original here, on tumblr

stylish kufiya, via pinterest

I have a new kufiyaspotting source. Result # 1:

Source: hi-imcurrentlyobsessed.tumblr.com via Julia on Pinterest

sins of style: kufiya no good because Justin Bieber wears one?

 I found this by doing a search for "keffiyeh" on Pinterest. I found a lot of excellent stuff which I will post in future. At first I thought this kufiya statement might be kinda racist but it turns out all the models for the 25 "sins of style," a website based in the UK, are people of colors. I guess you could read this statement as: if Bieber wears one, people of color shouldn't.

What I want to know is, where is the photo of Bieber in a kufiya?

My position on this blog has always been, why let a fact that Bieber is wearing one (if he is) bother you?

And if this model were wearing a kufiya over a black leather jacket instead of a t-shirt (bleh!), wouldn't it look way cooler?

And couldn't we also call this a Kurdish style scarf?

Kathryn Bigelow in kufiya, again (Zero Dark Thirty)

I was just watching a report on MSNBC about how a Senate committee is about to investigate whether the CIA gave "inappropriate" material to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the director and producer, respectively, of Zero Dark Thirty. There is of course a raging discussion about how torture of US detainees is portrayed in the film. And given that the film has not seen nationwide release, I've of course not seen it.

What interested me about the MSNBC report was that while the talking heads were doing their thing, in the background footage was rolling, which showed Kathryn Bigelow at work, and she was always or almost always wearing a kufiya around her neck.

Bigelow, right, on the set of Zero Dark Thirty (Jonathan Olley, Columbia Pictures)

Readers of this blog will remember that Bigelow also used to wear a kufiya while on the set of her previous film, The Hurt Locker. Look here. And here.

I really loved The Hurt Locker. Something tells me I many not feel the same way about Zero Dark Thirty.

fashion politics, 2002

From an article by Duncan Campbell in The Guardian way back in September 2002.

Kenneth Cole, the New York clothing, footware and accessory company, has launched a major advertising campaign based on statements on key political issues. In the most controversial advert, carried in leading US newspapers this week, a young man carries a newspaper headlined 'Holy War' under his arm while wearing the company's pinstriped suit, brown shirt and blue tie. The slogan reads: "Mideast peace is the must-have for fall." 

Another advert shows a model in jeans, sweater and scarf with two small boys playing with toy guns behind her. "Gun safety... it's all the rage," it reads.

"There seem to be a number of companies doing this now," said James MacKinnon, senior editor of Adbusters, the Vancouver magazine which describes itself as "the journal of the mental environment" and specialises in deconstructing advertisements and media messages. 

"They usually use very softball, very mild social messages," said MacKinnon. "Kenneth Cole clearly recognises that people want to feel as though they are buying into some social value as they buy belts and shoes. Who doesn't want Middle East peace? Putting something like 'Ending the occupation in Palestine is the must-have for fall' would be actually saying something." 

MacKinnon said that the trend of using social messages to sell fashion was started by Benetton, which ran an a series based on the idea of a multi-racial "united colours of Benetton". One advert featured a dying Aids patient. 

"This is just an empty stunt to stir up an empty controversy to sell an empty brand," said MacKinnon. 

A more thoroughgoing analysis can be found in "Gendered Security/National Security: Political Branding and Population Racism by Patricia Ticineto Clough and Craig Willse, writing in Social Text, available here.

Borrowing from the advertorial genre, the Kenneth Cole photos and text make the theme of security a matter of fashion, just a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center, and a few months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Through the gendered codes of fashion, the photos and text link national security to personal security, proposing that the for-mer is essential to the latter, and that the latter might be gendered in sucha way as to concern women in particular and — in the visual treatment of the white woman and black woman as equivalent and interchangeable — all women in the same way. 

Alas, I cannot find the images referred to, but here's a more recent KC "gun control" ad, from 2011.

Cindy Sherman in a Balenciaga Kufiya Dress: Untitled #463 (2007-2008)

© 2012 Cindy Sherman

I learned of this fabulous Cindy Sherman photo through Persis, who saw it on exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it will be hanging through October 8. You can learn more about the photo by listening to what the Museum of Modern Art has to say about it, here.

Sherman shot the photo during the height of the kufiya craze of the mid-aughties, which I have obsessively documented and commented upon on hawgblawg. Nicholas Ghesquière produced a kufiya-themed line for Balenciaga that was introduced in 2007. W magazine's Meggan Crum declared it to be one of Fall 2007's Top Ten Accessories. I was, however, only aware of this Balenciaga kufiya-style accessory (selling for a reported £3,000 -- or maybe £750):

I did not, however, know that Balenciaga had produced a kufiya dress. So thanks again, Persis. And Cindy. (If anyone spots anything more about that kufiya dress, please let me know.)

American Eagle Kufiyas on Times Square

Thanks to Nazli for alerting me to this, and sending me these photos, taken off the huge screens at Times Square, just a few days ago. I assume the screens are from the "77kids NYC Style Lab" that occupies the entire lower level of the American Eagle Outfitters' Times Square flagship at 1551 Broadway, which opened on July 20.

Yep, kufiyas go kid fashion. Kufiyas at the center of US commercial/popular culture. Is American Eagle trying to feed off of the incredible energy of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring? Is American Eagle trying to co-opt and market street fashion affiliated with the top news stories of the year? You betcha. And will this stop activists around the world from wearing their kufiyas? Hardly.

Here is the ad for the 77kids line, that is up right now on the American Eagle 77kids website. Funnily enough, although the kufiya is featured in the ads, I can't find it for sale as an accessory, either for boys or for girls. Hmmm.

Sander Reijgers' Nike Kufiya Jackets

Thanks to Omar for telling me about these. Sander Reijgers is a Dutch artist/designer. He came up with a series of Nike jackets (I don't think they really have anything to do with Nike, officially) which use the kufiya. He calls this designer series the "Cultural Contrast of Symbolism." I find the project rather uninspiring and behind the times, given that so many designers have been doing so many things with kufiyas for the last 5 or 6 years or so, without any kind of "artistic" or "theoretical" pretension, but rather, simply for profit. I've documented many of these uses of the kufiya on this blog. I'm underwhelmed. But for the record, check it out. This blog shows you all the photos of the project. The source is here.

Kufiya & Wardrobe Malfunction: Sofia Vergara

I guess it was inevitable that a kufiya would show up in such a context. Sofía Vergara is a Colombian model and actress, and currently, a star in the ABC series Modern Family.

Today, it was reported widely (in venues that deal in such items) that she went out yesterday in see-through leggings. And of course, someone caught it on camera. The reports that I read completely missed the fact that she was wearing a kufiya. Huffington Post (which one would imagine would know better) called it a "grey cape." I suppose they were concentrating entirely on the leggings.

You can find even more photos here, courtesy TMZ.

I had previously thought that kufiya had ceased to be high fashion, as of 2009. Have the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements brought it back?

Kufiyas: from Tahrir to the NY Times Style Mag to Occupy to Sheets Energy Strips w/ Stoudemire

Two friends kufiyaspotted for me today, and I found some of my own. Here's the round-up.

1. Amidst all the turmoil today on Tahrir Square, as the security forces attacked a few hundred camper-occupiers of the square, and in response, tens of thousands poured into the square to rescue it, to protest against the junta and its efforts to hijack the revolution and prevent the forward movement of democracy, and as battles erupted between the democracy forces and the thugs of the regime...

An enterprising salesman showed up in the evening to market his wares. It's autumn in Cairo, scarves are needed in the evenings, and especially, kufiyas, one of the insignias of the revolt, ever since January 25. (Here's the source.)

And there were plenty of photos from today of demonstrators in their kufiyas. Such as this one, courtesy The Guardian.

Khalil Hamra/AP

2. Then there is this, on p. 17, of the Sunday New York Times', The Winter 2011 Travel Issue of the Times Style Magazine. (A thousand thanks to Carolina for this.)

Interesting, no? Three designers (from Israel, Palestine, and the USSR), called threeAsfour, offering up designs from each of their respective traditions. Gabi Asfour (left, Palestinian) wears the Israeli design (based on the tiles of the floor of the Tel Aviv mayor's house), Adi Gil (center, Israeli) wears the Palestinian kufiya design, and Ange Donhauser (right, Russian, I guess) wears the Russian design. Although if you look closely you'll notice some kufiya patterns in the Israeli and that the Russian is wearing kufiya leggings. The line is called inSALLAm inSHALOm (pun on salaam and shalom and inshallah), and all the stuff is very, very, very expensive. (You can get a better view if you go to the link.)

Here is the website for threeAsfour, well worth checking out, and here is the very interesting video of their runway show, presenting the inSALLAm inSHALOm line at New York Fashion Week, September 2011. (They thank Sean Lennon at the end, so I suppose he had something to do with the soundtrack.)

threeASFOUR SS 2012 INSALAAM INSHALOM from threeASFOUR on Vimeo.

Check out the screencaps from the video:

This use of the kufiya in fashion has to be about the most interesting one that I've seen. It's telling that a Palestinian designer was involved. (And this, after I'd thought that the kufiya as high fashion phase had been over for at least a couple years. Is this the Tahrir effect?)

Notice that this uses the hand of Fatima, the khamsa (a symbol significant both for Muslims and Jews), and note the body suit and its kufiya pattern.

Note the blue evil eye symbols used cleverly here. And that under the sheer white dress the model is wearing, I guess, kufiya-patterned tights.

Kufiya patterned tights and hands of Fatima.

Red kufiya patterned dress over a kufiya patterned body suit on left. On right, more discrete black-and-white kufiya motif.

Here's a view from the back of that kufiya-patterned body suit.

Finally, the threeAsfour designers, after the show.

Finally, here's a piece from New York magazine on the emergence of threeAsfour from As Four (they lost the Tajik fourth awhile back). You learn that Angie once got into a fistfight with Cat Power (Chan Marshall). Nothing revealing about Gabi Asfour's Palestinian background, of course.

3. I've posted before about #Occupy kufiyas. Here's one from a demo I was at on November 17, to mark the 2 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and in DC, to focus on the lack of funding for infrastructure, by marching from McPherson Square (site of Occupy DC) to Key Bridge, which links Georgetown to Roslyn, VA, and which needs fixing up. There were several kufiya wearers out that day (including me). This is my best photo of one.

4. Finally, Andie sent me this one. It's a new add for Sheets Energy Strips. On the left is NY Nicks B-ball star Amar'e Stoudemire, on the right (in yellow kufiya), Celia, a graphic designer. I haven't found the actual ad, just this. If someone can help me source this better, please let me know.

Kufiya virus spreads....

Iconic Occupy Wall Street w/ 'V for Vendetta' Mask

You've probably seen this before, it has been reproduced multiple times. I can't even find the original source. If someone knows, I'd like to give credit, if possible.

Huffington Post's Guide to Middle East Head Coverings (Women's)

From burqas to burqinis to hijabs to niqabs, and more. By Anne Patterson. How interesting is it that this was published on January 25, 2011, the day of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising?

Kufiya affectation, courtesy shirt woot vs. New York magazine's OWS kufiya

Shirt.woot launches a new original t-shirt design every midnight(central). This shirt design came in third in the Hipster Animals derby.

Along with a posted commentary (October 10), which included these lines:

"Personally, I’m sick of all these button-down mainstreamers giving me static about my scarf. “It’s September,” they say. “It’s basically still summer,” they say. “You can’t possibly be cold,” they say...“What’s wrong in your brain that makes a cheesy, affected fashion accessory seem more important to you than your physical comfort?”

Affected? Pshuh! “Dude,” I always want to say (before deciding to just sneer at them with silent disdain instead), “35% of the surface area of my body is neck. A scarf is essential for maintaining my core body temperature, OK?”

That’s right. Scarf life, y’all. Recognize.

On days when I wear a keffiyeh, though, that’s totally affectation, I’ll give you that."

More tongue-in-cheek hipster bashing. But then there's this. Is this "affected," shirt woot?!

Even New York magazine's cover story (October 24), which the image above thematizes, is much more positive than shirt woot, which tries to be cool. Although it does so in a kind of abashed, rather apologetic, but hopefully post-irony tone: "The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright." Dude, seriously, let this sixties-era geezer tell you: these kids are way better than alright. Viva #ows.

I really, really, like that the person on the cover wears two, mixed-together scarves: an American flag scarf (we are reclaiming our country!) and a kufiya (we are inspired by the Arab spring and maybe, just a bit, by Palestine).

Ok, here's another Pat Benatar kufiya

Because you wanted it:

Someone passed this on to me awhile back, but I can't remember who.

It turns out that this photo was used as the cover for the Japanese version of Pat's single, "Temporary Heroes," from her 1984 album Tropico. Here's the song, for the curious. No connection at all between its lyrics and the scarf Pat is wearing. Not that one would expect any.

 Clearly, here, she is saluting the Palestinian cause, right? The US 12" single looks quite different.

I posted another photo of Benatar in kufiya previously, here. Here is a better version of the one I published earlier.

They're everywhere...

My checker at Safeway (Wisconsin Ave.), October 28, 2011, a photo by tsweden on Flickr.

Tilda Swinton in UK Vogue (November)

This photo has been passed around heavily by my Palestine-oriented FB friends. It was announced that this photo appeared in the November issue of Vogue. I immediately ran down to my local Barnes & Noble and thumbed through every single page of the November issue. I didn't see it. I deduce that it appears (alas!) in UK Vogue and not in the USA edition. I hope someone will send it to me as a gift. It's pretty amazing, no? For those of you who are not Palestine fanatics, the scarf is in the the colors of the Palestine flag.

(Meanwhile, you have to see Tilda in the film Gloria (2008). Absolutely phenomenal.)

Levi's kufiya fashion, from last winter

Levi's kufiya fashion, from last winter, a photo by tsweden on Flickr.

I'm trying to catch up on kufiya fashion logging. I'm way behind. I was sent this photo back in February, by Nirvana. I wish I had bought the shirt for someone.

hijabistas

Entrepreneurial Muslim women, making modest dress mainstream in Europe.

Her customers include non-Muslims too. "You don't have to be Muslim to prefer conservative dress," she said.