Israeli pioneer fashion returns to Tel Aviv
The newly rebooted Ata fashion line is finding a market in the young generation with its unique brand of Israeli utilitarianism and nostalgia for the early days of the state.
When I told fashion designer Dalya Bar Or that I remember my grandfather wearing Ata clothes, she laughs. "Everyone remembers a grandfather or uncle wearing Ata," she says. "The moment the topic is mentioned, that's what people say."
Bar Or, both a designer and a historian of fashion, wrote her doctoral dissertation on "Ata and Israeli society, 1934-1986," which has naturally occasioned hearing this excited response from Israelis many times. In its time, Ata had a mythical and symbolic status in Israel, though the grand Zionist textile factory closed its gates 30 years ago. Its unique status is now bringing Ata back to life, as Itay Yaacov, a fashion correspondent for the XNet website, documented eight months ago.
