Fashion shoot slated at Israeli barrier

An Israeli fashion house plans to shoot its summer catalog at Israel’s West Bank security barrier today, the company said, less than a week after troops shot dead two Palestinians protesting the network of walls, wire and ditches.

A statement from the fashion house, Comme-il-faut, said the one-day shoot would take place at a section of the barrier on the edge of Jerusalem “for the purpose of creating a dialogue around boundaries.”

The statement said the event would contrast beauty, femininity and fashion with a “concrete wall of insult, ugliness and humiliation.”

Israel says it needs the barrier to prevent suicide bombers and other attackers from entering its towns and cities. Last week, two Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli forces not far from the site the company picked to send its models and photographers.

Palestinians say the partially built barrier -- which would dip deep into the West Bank in some parts of its planned 400-mile route -- is a land grab meant to prevent them from establishing an independent state.

Comme-il-faut got its summer catalog idea from students at a Jerusalem design school doing a course on the use of ideology in advertising. They came up with the concept of fashion on the fence, with the slogan “women cross boundaries.”

The fashion firm’s CEO, Sybil Goldfiner, said the project reflects Comme-il-faut’s feminist agenda. “Every time there is a terror attack,” she added, “we soon afterward go back to life as normal. We want to emphasize those paradoxes.”