A Palestinian woman fashion designer introduces traditional Palestinian stitching into modern clothing

Al Arabi al Jadid newspaper published a report about Faten Meeari, a Palestinian fashion designer living in Ain el Helweh and who modernizes Palestinian stitching design by introducing it to contemporary clothes. Meeari started her career by designing modern clothes.  However, ten years later she started working on traditional Palestinian stitched clothes and transformed them into modern outfits.  A year and a half ago, she succeeded in her experiment and introduced Palestinian stitching to shirts, pullovers, and handbags with a view to marketing Palestinian heritage to the youth.  Meeari said that modernization is not at the level of the stitches because these represent Palestinian heritage and tradition.  Modernization, she adds, is at the level of design only adding that she had this idea because she noticed that young people are not likely to wear the traditionally stitched Palestinian caftans.
Faten works at home where she designs her models including wedding dresses.  Most of her clients come from outside Ain el Helweh camp as her designs are too expensive for camp residents.  According to her, the high cost of her products is largely due to the cost of stitching as every 2500 stitches use 1 special yarn of stitching threads, adding that one dress normally will include 10000 stitches and will require 15 days of manual embroidery work.

Source: Al-Araby Al-Jadid 13 September 2014