Dina AbransonThe keffiyeh is, maybe, one of the most noticeable accessories in the Middle East, and has long ago become a symbol of conflict. The fashion designer Linda Smilestone decided to turn it into a feminine item, colored it pink and donates the earnings to women with breast cancer.
Linda Smilestone, a patriotic Israeli fashion designer, grew up in Canada on the Atlantic coast. When she returned to live for a period of time in Nova Scotia, Canada, she noticed that almost half the city was walking around with a keffiyeh in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Her idea was to take the item that is identified with the word “conflict” and turn it into a symbol of love.
To brand it anew, she began to examine various alternatives to the classic keffiyeh, which is masculine and colored in shades of black, green and red, until she reached a soft-pink keffiyeh. She decided to donate the earnings from the sales to women with breast cancer.
“I wanted to counter the negative energy of the symbol, which was dominating and masculine, and return it its feminine quality. That’s also the reason I chose a color called ‘English Rose’, a very feminine and soft color.”
She also contacted the Canadian Manufacturing Institute and asked them for a list of Indian factories that provide their workers with reasonable working conditions, and started producing large amounts of the new keffiyeh, now named the Keffit and made of 50% cotton and 50% polyester so that it can be machine-washed and not only hand-washed.
Maximal fun
“‘Keffit’ comes from the word for “fun” in Hebrew (‘kef’),” explains Linda, “It’s meant to be used not only as a piece of clothing but also as a tablecloth, a baby wrap, a bed covering, a fashionable scarf. By the way, the original use of the keffiyeh was not only for wearing on the head, but as a cover for anything, and I want to restore the keffiyeh to its true place.”
A 3,000-year-old accessory
In my opinion, the keffiyeh developed from the Jewish Tzitzit (fringes) used during prayer. The keffiyeh has been worn worldwide for the past 3,000 years, ever since the beginning of the cotton industry in Egypt. The desert nomads wore the keffiyeh to protect themselves from the sun, wrap babies, and cover tables. But the tassels on the keffiyeh were used to count the prayers in the desert. During travel, the nomads counted their prayers with the tassels on the keffiyeh, and that’s how they knew how many kilometers they crossed. There’s a saying in English: “count your blessings”; that’s where it comes from.
The phenomenal success of the keffiyeh in Canada
Linda began to offer the Keffit for sale in Nova Scotia, a city on the Atlantic Coast of Canada that is visited by more than 15,000 tourists daily. Within a few days, the pink keffiyeh became a smash hit, and was purchased not only by Canadians but also by tourists from all over the world.
How did people react to a pink keffiyeh?
“Very positively,” says Linda. “Mostly women bought them. They came up to the stand, and when they saw that I turned the keffiyeh into something that helps donate money to cancer patients, they were so moved that they cried, and every woman shared her story about a mother, sister or good friend who suffer from cancer. They immediately purchased the scarf.”
What was the reaction of the Muslim audience?
As soon as the saw the item, they immediately looked at me, to see who is behind this, who the person who invented this is, because I look like I have nothing to do with the Middle East. They looked at me and said to themselves: okay, she’s not part of the conflict. They smiled at me from ear to ear and said: do you know that we have this in our country, too?
The keffiyeh that was sent to Prince Harry
Linda doesn’t only sell her scarves to fashion lovers; she wants to create a revolution of love throughout the world. She sent a keffiyeh to Prince Harry of the British royal family, among others, and also to Brigitte Gabriel, a pro-Israeli American immigrant from Lebanon, as well as other public-opinion leaders worldwide.
For years, Linda Smilestone travelled between Israel and Canada. In the past two years she returned to live in Israel, and she hopes that the Israeli audience will like the idea, too, because of its fashion statement but also because of its revolutionary statement that tries to take the symbol of conflict and declare it a symbol of love and generosity for women who are healing from breast cancer.
The Keffit can be purchased in pink, yellow, and rainbow colors on Linda’s website.
