At the last Tel Aviv Fashion Week, Dorin Frankfurt presented, under the caption "Sabra", a wonderfully refined and precise collection. Models strutted the catwalk with a naive appearance, childish and innocent, in cotton dresses and wide linen trousers, hinting at cuts from earlier decades.
Unlike other local designers, who choose to focus on current, romantic trends of the season, the main, unmistakable characteristic of the items that Frankfurt designs is that they always speak the local language.
Her source of inspiration is the charm and uniqueness of Israel, and Israeliness has been her main agenda over the years, throughout the design and production process. In the world of Israeli fashion, in which anyone who can sew fancies themselves a designer, and shops open and shut at a bewildering rate, Frankfurt is one of a kind.
The designer, who has been a star of the industry since 1982, works from her factory in south Tel Aviv, and produces clothes that have a coherent ideology behind them.
While the big textiles companies have abandoned the homeland in favor of production in the Far East, which has proved more profitable, Frankfurt makes a point of producing in Israel, and even markets her wares under this title.
"When the fashion house started out in 1982, the idea was to set up in Israel a small factory that would produce quality designer clothes in small series and at reasonable prices," she recalls. "This was our agenda even before we bought a single sewing machine. The idea was not just to make a living from the community, but also to provide a living to the community, and that people of all religions and ethnic backgrounds would work for us. On the whole, it succeeded."
Every morning, Frankfurt's factory springs to life with a staff of about 150 seamstresses, cutters, pressers, and designers who come to the huge, open and well-lit space.
In the 1980s, Frankkfurt was not unusual, but within a few years dozens of textiles factories in Israel began to close. Israel became a start-up nation, and the fashion and textiles industry was left behind.
"I'm a manufacturer. I have a factory, and I'm the only fantasist who continues to make everything in Israel," says Frankfurt. "At the start of the 80s, a decision was made to let the industry die, because they said it wasn't competitive, and we should become a high-tech power. I started the protest against the fact that the country was not maintaining its own manufacturing community when Arik Sharon was minister of industry and trade. But after I went through the entire political spectrum and realized that I was talking to windmills, I gave it up."
Although she has a splendid resume of three decades as a fashion designer, Frankfurt doesn't rest for a moment. Every season she once again demonstrates her creative power, and despite, or perhaps because of, her long experience, she still manages to be fresh and new, and to gauge accurately the taste of her following.
But Frankfurt does not take success for granted, including the success she scored with the latest collection she showed in Tel Aviv, which received imprtessive coverage in the international press.
"I went to the Tel Aviv Fashion Week feeling pretty anxious," she admits. "I knew there would be glittering clothes there, and I come with pink cotton dresses. I was scared to death, but I knew that I had to remain true to myself. I don't do gimmicks and I don't make clothes for show. I belong to a generation that has known splendid fashion weeks and less splendid ones. But in principle, any initiative that can promote local industry we should be there and do it."
On the catwalk of the Tel Aviv Fashion week, the gap between the established designers like Frankfurt, Sasson Kedem, Gideon Oberson and Mira Zwillinger, and the young designers, was very obvious. All the same, Frankfurt has no doubt about the potential latent in the next generation of designers. "There are certainly people here whose work is worthy of reaching an overseas audience," she says.
Where does the gap between the generations lie?
"I had a dream of creating a brand with a very clear signature, and it happened. Today, when I think about it, it was a strange way to begin. True, it worked, but my career started the wrong way round. Because when you come with a signature and an agenda, you are committed to it. We dreamt so much, that we didn't even think about whether there were customers for this thing. We didn't realize that our way of thinking was impractical."
What is the most common mistake of young designers today?
"One of the things that most grates with me in interviews with young designers is the motto 'I'll do design that will change the world.' But to be a young designer means not just giving your worldview; it also means listening to the views of a changing world. You have to know all the designers of your generation and what they are doing differently, and, no less importantly, to know your own past. You can't create a unique language without knowing your roots."
Is the Israeli market's small size an advantage or a disadvanatage?
"That is actually the strength of the young designers. Because if you're good, you become well known very quickly."
To learn from Spain
Is there room to grow, when Israel doesn't recognize the importance of this industry, certainly not of the young generation?
"We have amazing designers, and everything is done to make their lives difficult. In Britain and Spain, the industry and trade ministries chose over the past two decades to promote their local industries, which grew nicely, and in the last decade they have been joined by Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. It can be done here too. I don't believe in giving money; I believe in concessions.
"In 1985, the Spanish government decided to develop the industry in Spain in a completely pragmatic way. Today, you can't think 'fashion' without thinking 'Spain'. A year later, six designers put Belgium on the map (the 'Antwerp Six', Y. B-Y). If Belgium and the Scandinavian countries have started to position themselves in fashion, we can do it too. Is there a better spokesperson for a country than its design?"
What would you suggest?
"A country needs to have industry and culture, and nothing can be done without assistance. The country's entire attitude to industry is short-term. Elsewhere in the world, they long ago recognized the power of small manufacturing industry, and we still think in terms of steel and cement. Young designers first of all need accessible spaces at affordable rents. In Jerusalem, for example, in the center of the city, the municipality has allocated a site for 20 designers in various fields at a 50% subsidy. On the other hand, it's not just what you receive from the state; it's also what you give of yourself.
"In the welter of brands that there are in the world, which are fine and good, the only way to survive, to live and be happy with what you are doing, is if there is a purpose to it, an agenda. I make demands on our elected representatives, but I also make demands on myself, over matters like production, purchasing, taking an interest in Israeli made products.
"The shoes of designers like Shani Bar, Oded Arama, or 'Ahat Ahat' cost the same as shoes we buy abroad, and so there's a question of choice here. If anyone wants social justice, let them get up in the morning and make it happen, among other things by preferring to buy Israeli products. Revolutions are not made by slogans, but by needs and actions."
Frankfurt's design signature, characterized by, among other things, cuts that play on the androgynous look, and her collections composed of quality cloths with the plethora of patterns unique to her, have, over the years, won a regular set of customers overseas too. She sells with success in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Norway, and Greece. "When we saw that we couldn't support the thing we had set up, we looked outwards, and, with some cheek, opened a shop in Covent Garden in London designed by Ron Arad. That move, although it was made without market surveys, established us as a brand. I never dreamt of being an international icon. I was interested in being an Israeli designer and that my language should speak to people. That people around the world buy my clothes is a miracle."
Although in the past overseas sales accounted for 50-60% of total sales, for technical reasons Frankfurt decided to lower her profile in recent years, and overseas sales are currently only about 10% of the total. "I sell in Germany and in England, and only clothes from an existing collection. I had a sales website, but I took it down, because the way we are built I couldn't ensure that shipments were accurate. At the moment, we are working on a venture in Germany of marketing on the Internet. I'm prepared to do many things, but not running around and travelling."
What's the next thing on the agenda?
"I'm not interested in growing and opening more stores. I'm satisfied, so anything to do with expansion is at the expense of contraction somewhere else. I don't think about expanding the brand but about extending the product, such as bags and jewelry, and I have lots of dreams, such as paper products, bedclothes, men's shirts and trousers not in the sense of an entire line and the new baby is swimwear and bodywear. I have no fantasies about an exhibition in a museum."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 10, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012