Couture for charity

The fashion-show fund-raiser comes to Tel Aviv, courtesy of a New York teen.

By BEN SALES
Reuth fashion show in Tel Aviv. (photo credit: COURTESY REUTH)
Reuth fashion show in Tel Aviv.
(photo credit: COURTESY REUTH)
Israel is known for many things – startups, felafel, an often intractable territorial conflict – but fashion has never been one of them.
A T-shirt, jeans and sandals are considered proper attire both at the workplace and at weddings.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gained notice early in his tenure simply for wearing a tie in public. At the Knesset, at least, lawmakers aren’t allowed to wear Crocs... unless they’re navy or black.
So when Tamara Freudenstein put on a fashion show in a Tel Aviv event hall earlier this month to raise money for a social service organization, the 19-year-old Westchester native had to convince attendees of two things: that the cause was worth paying money for and that fashion was worth paying attention to.
“New York is a fashion capital, but here people were like, ‘Oh, something new, something different,’” she says. “It made it that much more exciting.”
By day, she is a student in a gap-year program at Bar-Ilan University, studying marketing and English literature along with Jewish studies. A graduate of the modern-Orthodox SAR High School in Riverdale, New York, she plans to major in business or economics in college.
By night (or at least, on the Monday night of the show), Freudenstein – wearing a white dress with sheer, patterned sleeves – is a precocious event planner. Her fashion show had close to 250 attendees sitting in chairs that formed a U-shaped runway. Models strutted down the catwalk wearing designs from a range of Israeli haute couture brands, from Dorin Frankfurt to Ronen Farache. Ticket sales benefited Reuth, an organization that manages retirement homes and provides medical care for disabled and chronically ill patients.
The show, called “Reuth Runway,” followed a show of the same name that Freudenstein put on in New York last year. Her grandmother sits on the board of American Friends of Reuth, and Freudenstein has volunteered with the organization for the past two years.
The idea for the New York show occurred to the young student because, she says, “fashion is something that comes easily to me.” Her mother, Sharon Freudenstein, a former clothing buyer for Bloomingdale’s stores, helped her produce the New York and Tel Aviv events.
While a fashion show may be more novel in Tel Aviv than it is in New York, the younger Freudenstein says Israel’s informal culture made it easier for her to connect with designers and persuade them to lend their designs. But, she says, Israeli informality also came with drawbacks.
“Here they ignore emails and say ‘maybe’ and don’t confirm things,” she says.
“They like to wait [until] a week before the show to confirm.”
Business style isn’t the only difference between Israel’s and America’s sartorial gurus. While New York designers tend toward minimalism, Freudenstein says, Tel Aviv’s fashionistas prefer to go big.
“Here they go all out,” she says. “They love the patterns, they love the pleats. I love that about it.”
She spent four months planning the show, but one thing that wasn’t difficult, she says, was getting designers to pay attention to a 19-year-old student.
“I don’t think people knew how old I was,” she says, explaining that she would make the initial connection on the phone. “I tried to leave them out of it at the beginning so they would take me more seriously.” – JTA