Embroidering Exile: Palestinian Dress in the Wake of Al-Nakba and Al-Naksa

The forced displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1950, known as al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”), marked a rupture in everyday life that profoundly transformed Palestinian dressmaking traditions. Dress styles, motifs, and their meanings shifted as tatreez (embroidery)  became a response to dispossession, dislocation, and exile. Further transformations occurred during key moments of Palestinian political history: the 1960s, particularly surrounding al-Naksa (the 1967 war, or "the setback"), and the First Intifada from (1987-1993). In refugee camps and across the diaspora, the practice of Palestinian dressmaking and embroidery continued, but with renewed urgency. Once tied to specific towns or villages, the thobe began to signify a shared national identity. 

This lecture commemorates the Six-Day War (June 5–10, 1967), which marked the beginning of the ongoing Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of this seismic event, tatreez shifted in its meaning and function as a form of cultural expression and testimony. From the intimate labor of individual women’s hands to the international recognition of Palestinian embroidery by UNESCO in 2021 as Intangible Cultural Heritage, tatreez continues to serve as a vessel of collective memory and a historical record of the Palestinian people.

Join Wafa Ghnaim, dress historian and fashion researcher, for a lecture tracing the evolving aesthetics and symbolic language of tatreez as a visual archive of exile with a tatreez community stitching circle to follow.