Empowering elegance: 7 October survivors take centre stage at stirring fashion show
Survivors and bereaved step on to the catwalk in dresses created to symbolise the attacks
Survivors of the October 7 massacre have modelled outfits inspired by the atrocities created by some of Israel’s finest designers.
As reported in the Daily Mail, the models included British-Israeli Jessica Elter, who heard the moment her fiancé Ben was shot dead as she spoke with him on the phone, and the famous ‘Woman in Red’ Vlada Paptov, who was captured sprinting away from Hamas gunmen at the Nova music festival in one of the most recognisable images of the slaughter.
Each model was either a survivor who witnessed the massacre, or had lost a loved one. They came together to put on a show of defiance, vowing: “We will dance again.” The fashion show, by Fine Productions, was held in Old Jaffa on Sunday. It was called POV, standing for point of view, as it told the story of the massacre from different perspectives.
Jessica Elter wore a white wedding dress with a ‘bullet hole’ in her heart. Vlada Patapov wore a blue dress inspired by the Israeli flag. Bar Goldstein wore a gold dress made from shell casings.
As she put on the wedding dress, Jessica Elter began to cry. The Liverpool-born model’s fiance, Ben Shimoni, was shot dead by terrorists on October 7 as he sacrificed his life to save over a dozen people from the Nova festival massacre.
“The first sentence that I said wearing that dress was I wanted this moment just with Ben,” the 27-year-old told the Daily Mail in Tel Aviv, Israel. Her partner of six years escaped the massacre only to ignore pleas from her and her family to return multiple times to save people before he was killed while she was on the phone to him.
“I miss him.” she said. “I miss him every second of the day. But the only thing I can do besides missing him is doing things so that people will remember Ben – telling his story all around the world.”
Yovel Sharvit Trabelsi (far left) 26, lost her husband, Mor Trabelsi (left), 27, who was shot in the head in front of her – exactly one month after their wedding day.
When the car they were fleeing in rolled into a ditch, Trabelsi was forced to cover herself in her newly wedded-husband’s blood and play dead for over six hours. She too wore a wedding dress, almost identical to the one she wore on September 7, with a bullet hole on her head and the words ‘No More Killing’ on the back. It was covered in hands to reflect the fact that she witnessed terrorists raping and kidnapping other festival goers while she lay waiting for the army to rescue her.
“I saw everything,’ she said. “When I came out of the car I saw all the bodies on the floor. Now I am standing here because I want people to remember the story of my husband. We got married one month before the attack. I have my hair in the same style I had it that day. This dress is the same as my wedding dress. I miss him.’
Sapir Taylor Rose designed a dress with the help of her children Taylor, five, and Dylan, four, after her only brother, Sun Yahakobar, was killed at the festival. The children drew images showing their pain which she put on a duvet and later modelled into a dress as “a big hug”. Rose said: “My children are always sad, all the time they are crying and drawing. They ask why is the sun only in the sky and not here? My heart is broken. I take all this and I put all this in the fabric. I used a duvet and I make a big hug.”
Wearing Rose’s dress was Yarin Amar, 22, who fled the festival and played dead for eight hours. She hid in the bushes and covered herself in the blood of the dead bodies surrounding her. She heard the terrorists raping and shooting while she lay there.
“We ran to the bushes,” Amar said. ‘There were so many dead people around me. I would take their blood to look like I am dead. I was there for eight hours. I didn’t see the rape with my eyes, but I heard it. They were taking a girl, raping her and passing her from each other. Then they shoot them.”
Amar said she was wearing her dress “to tell the real story of the victims”.
Among the participants was survivor Bar Goldstein, 24, who wore a gold dress made of bullets after she used her body to shelter friends cowering from Hamas gunmen on October 7. Miraculously, she escaped.
Another survivor stripped off her outfit on the runway to reveal a blood-stained bodysuit to symbolise the rape of so many Israeli women that day. Tal Lee Menachem, 32, came out in a grey trench coat with the date of the terror attack etched on the front in red ribbons. It had Star of David badges down the collar in reference to the Holocaust as Jews were forced to wear the markers in Nazi Germany.
She dropped the coat to reveal a white wedding dress underneath, symbolising the innocence and beauty of the partygoers at the festival on October 7. In a shock tactic, she then stripped this off to reveal a blood-stained bodysuit. This was a striking reference to the many Israeli women raped by Hamas terrorists.
Vlada Patapov closed the show as she represented hope for the people of Israel. Her dress was inspired by the Israeli flag with birds of peace on her hat. Her appearance at the fashion show comes two months after a picture of her fleeing the festival in a red shawl became one of the most hauntingly iconic images from the atrocity. Discussing the impact of her story, Mrs Patapov said: ‘I didn’t even know how far my story had spread. So many people wanted to know what happened to me. After this story I am getting so many messages saying thank God I’m fine, my boyfriend is fine.
“I came back to my friends like many others didn’t. I’m closing the show to show something happy happening – to show hope.’
Describing the importance of the show, Lian Mizrachi, 26, who designed Elter’s wedding dress, said: “Two months ago Israel had a disaster inflicted by Hamas. We are here to memorise them and also to make some noise in the world about what has happened here in Israel.”
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