Download PDF Version
Printable Version
Keffiyeh: From Resistance Symbol to Retail Item?
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Edited Transcript of Remarks by Dr. Ted Swedenburg
Transcript No. 326 (8 April 2010)
To view the video of this briefing online, go to
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/10464/pid/3584
The Palestine Center
Washington, D.C.
8 April 2010
Dr. Ted Swedenburg:
Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure to be here and an honor to be here. It’s really good to see people I haven’t seen in years. As many, if not most of you are probably aware, beginning in about 2006, the keffiyeh started to be seen all over in the U.S., and in many surprising places, and in many remarkable transformations. The trend accelerated further in 2007 and 2008.
My own interest in the keffiyeh, both academic and political, developed in the course of reading and hearing stories about the 1936-39 Rebellion in Palestine, which was the subject of my book, as you heard, Memories of Revolt, originally published in 1995. It seems that the emergence of the keffiyeh, or the hatta, as it is known in Palestinian colloquial, its emergence as a national sartorial symbol of Palestinian resistance goes back to this period, when it was worn, and embraced as an image, by the armed guerillas who prosecuted armed rebellion against the British occupiers of Palestine. Until this period, the keffiyeh had primarily marked its wearer as rural, as a peasant, fallah, or a Bedouin, and hence as someone who was located in an inferior position on the social and cultural hierarchy, below that of educated, middle class urbanites, who mostly distinguished themselves by wearing the tarbush or fez. In the fall and summer of 1938, the guerilla bands that were rooted in the countryside and composed primarily of peasant fighters, began seizing control of Palestinian urban centers. As they did so, they mounted a campaign to force the urban middle classes, the effendiya, to take off their tarbushes and don the keffiyehs, in an effort to impose national unity in matters of dress that also represented a kind of symbolic inversion of the social hierarchy. Abd al-Raziq was known to be rough in this regard imposing this on tarbush wearers. When the keffiyeh was revived in the nineteen sixties by the Palestinian resistance movement as a symbol of national struggle and an image of unity, the history of this moment, whereby unity was momentarily imposed by the lower social orders, was mostly forgotten.
What I want to do here, however, is not talk about the history of the hatta in Palestine, but talk about the history of the Palestinian keffiyeh in the West, focusing primarily on the United States. I'm interested, then, in the keffiyeh as a kind of sign of the various sorts of linkages and connections between Palestine and the U.S., as a key signifier of the sorts of transnational forms of communication and intercourse that are mostly every day, are sometimes unremarked, are sometimes subversive, that are frequently complicated to read and interpret and are characterized by complicated and shifting dynamics and motivations, including solidarity, commerce, attraction, violence, antagonism, ignorance and exoticization.
I started blogging on what I call hawgblawg, as a lover of tarbushes, in August 2005 and by September of 2005 I put up my first in what became an ongoing series of posts that I called ‘keffiyehspottings’, where I reported on notable individuals who were sighted in a keffiyeh, in some of the cases contemporary, others, items from the past. This was just a bit before what some have called the “keffiyeh craze” took off, but it is a trend that I have followed, as best as I can, ever since. And because images and their circulation are so central to this process of spotting and blogging and more recently, Facebooking, I've been amassing images for the last several years. So I'm going to be showing you quite a lot of these today as I narrate and try to make some sense of this story.
I'm going to start by talking about the keffiyeh craze, showing you lots and lots of images, beginning with some from 2004 that prefigure the full-blown launching of the craze in 2006 and ending with contemporary images. My discussion here concentrates on the domains of fashion and style and the donning of keffiyehs by various celebrities. Then I turn to a consideration of one of the chief forms of critique of the keffiyeh fashion trend, one that comes in large part from Arab-American activists. My response to this critique involves in part a retracing of the history of the keffiyeh and its uses in the U.S. prior to 2004, as well as a rethinking of the questions of fashion and celebrity. I devote a little bit less time to a look at critiques of the keffiyeh that focus on its embrace by the urban demographic of the hipster. I’ll show you some slides on Israeli or Jewish uses or appropriations of the keffiyeh, as well as the recently increased visibility of what might be called the U.S. military keffiyeh or the U.S. tough guy keffiyeh; something that I’ve just recently become aware of. I conclude with some assessments of the post-2005 keffiyeh trends and my assessments might be termed pess-optimistic. And I’m going to give you some suggestions for how activists, or at least people who care about Palestine, and therefore, necessarily, about the keffiyeh, might want to take advantage of the current situation.
In the first part, I'm going to proceed chronologically, starting in 2004, in order to give you a sense of all the transformations, the outlets, the players, the intensities and the proliferations. [Slide] This is a slide from the primaries in 2004. The story is that a supporter threw this on him [Howard Dean] at an event. He wore it for only a few minutes then he took it off. This photo only became important three to four years later when right-wing critics began to weigh in on the keffiyeh phenomenon and called those who wore it supporters of terrorism and named Dean as one of the chief offenders. [Slide] The Libertines, a well-known British rock band, [are] known in particular for the drug-related antics of Pete Dougherty [who is] to the right of keffiyeh wearer Carl Barat.
By this time, sufficient time has passed since 9/11 so that some fashion designers feel able to play with sartorial images of the threatening other, to incorporate them into street wear. [Slide] Notice that this hooded or masked keffiyeh look is more threatening than what you usually see. This is the big moment though. [Slide] Quentin Tarantino wearing one of the first keffiyeh designs of this period from a reputed fashion designer who’s from Iceland, Jon Audarson. This is the first I’ve come across of somebody using the keffiyeh pattern design on a shirt. Audarson called it his “Arab cowboy shirt.” This fits, of course, with Tarantino's bad-boy image. Interestingly enough, no right-wing bloggers have ever criticized Tarantino for wearing it. [Slide] More hip style than high fashion, keffiyeh perhaps bought from a street vendor in New York City. [Slide] This is the second well-known designer to employ the keffiyeh, Robert Geller. The keffiyeh has entered high fashion and it's becoming much more generally present than before.
Already, neo-con commentator Michelle Malkin is blogging in June 20, 2006 against what she terms "hate couture" as well as the “keffiyeh craze.” She is probably the first to call it the keffiyeh craze before it actually seems to be that much of a craze.
[Slide] The featured men's accessory item in Urban Outfitters' online early spring catalogue, launched in January 2007, was the keffiyeh, marketed as an “anti-war woven scarf,” and sold in black and white, turquoise, red and brown. This, it seems, was the keffiyeh's first entry into a major clothing chain. Within days, protests--unclear whether these were organized or not--prompted Urban Outfitters to delete the line. Company CEO, Dick Hayne, apologized to an Israeli activist that the company had not intended “to imply any sympathy for or support of terrorists or terrorism.” Nonetheless, they continued to sell keffiyehs, not marketed as such, in all their outlets. They just didn't feature them in their catalogue and they didn't say they were anti-war scarves. I have keffiyeh spotters all over the world and they help me and send me photos and things.
[Slide] With the appearance of French designer Nicholas Ghesquiere's uses of the keffiyeh for his fall 2007 fashion line for Balenciaga, cost: 3,000 pounds, and his deployment of world-class models to wear them, the keffiyeh spectacularly arrives in the world of high fashion.
The Urban Outfitters hubbub as well as the keffiyeh's ubiquity prompted a great deal of mainstream media commentary in winter and spring of 2007. Most notably, at least most notably for me and Rochelle Davis, anthropology professor at Georgetown [University], we are both quoted in The New York Times Sunday Style Section on February 11, 2007. The article did a credible job of discussing the political versus the fashion dimensions of the keffiyeh. Jay Hukahori, who appears in the article as well, declares that she had not worn her keffiyeh for several months because the fashion was “dead.” Parsons School of Design--so she thought she knew something. Dead for her, maybe, but not for many others. For soon after the Times article appears, numerous celebrities begin to show up at public events where they are photographed wearing keffiyehs. These sightings are posted on various blogs and, of course, circulated on the internet.
[Slide] Actor Colin Farrell. He was spotted several times. I read, but I can’t track down the information, apparently one of these times he was at some Palestinian film but I don’t know which one and I don’t have information. [Slide] Soccer star and metrosexual man-about-town David Beckham. [Slide] And an interesting innovation: If it's too warm out for a scarf, you can still wear a keffiyeh printed on a t-shirt. Apparently the Carl Barat in keffiyeh phenomenon is well enough known in England that The Libertines can be used as a name for a keffiyeh trompe l'oeil t-shirt. The names tend to dodge or to avoid controversial names such as Arab or Palestinian or even keffiyeh. So, tablecloth is one option. Riviera keffiyeh. Euro-keffiyeh and you’ll see others. This slide shows the increasing uses of multiple colors of the keffiyeh, in addition to the traditional red and white and black and white. [Slide] Diane Kruger, another celebrity sighting.
“Pink shemagh; a name that is used much more commonly in Britain and Canada than in the U.S. due to the fact that British forces adopted the keffiyeh in World War II and wore it and still wear them in Iraq and in Afghanistan. [Slide] John Galliano; another well-known designer using the keffiyeh. This is the other most high profile fashion use of the keffiyeh. [Slide] On the left side, I think it evokes Rudolph Valentino in the film "The Sheikh." Note that it's worn, unusually in the fashion world, on the head in traditional fashion, with an 'igal. Note that the keffiyeh pattern is printed on the military style vest. On the right, evoking anarchist street fighter; the black bloc that traditionally covers their faces.
[Slide] Men's fashion magazine DNR, in its 6th Annual Editors' Choice Awards in May 2007, names the keffiyeh the “Most Provocative Fashion Trend” of the year even though DNR said it was mostly not a “fervent political statement.” Provocative, apparently, because it's flirting with and evoking a dangerous political issue, but yet not overtly or passionately political.
[Slide] Actor Kirsten Dunst on the pages of Teen Vogue, which describes the scarf as the new “it” accessory. As a breezy global-chic scarf presenting it as a signifier of cosmopolitanism, devoid of all dangerous connotations. This is the sort of assimilation of the keffiyeh that drives the activists crazy. [Slide] By summer 2007, the keffiyeh is so ubiquitous that it can be worn by a tween lining up to buy the latest volume of Harry Potter. And this fact passes without any comment from The New York Times. [Slide] Juliette Lewis, a U.S. actress who specializes in edgy roles, visits Jerusalem in summer 2007 as is photographed in this pose. Presumably she was visiting a tourist shop in East Jerusalem where the Palestinian shopkeeper tried to sell her a keffiyeh and 'igal. [Slide] A keffiyeh pops out of Justin Timberlake's back pocket during his performance at the September 2007 MTV [Video] Music Awards. Presumably, not a wardrobe malfunction. Timberlake later shows up a few months later as a guest in a music video wearing a trompe l'oeil t-shirt.
[Slide] Clever innovation. Notice that Kiser, a U.S. company, is somewhat unique in that it names the item for sale, kefia. [Slide] The award-winning Israel born, New York-based, designer Nili Lotan used the keffiyeh pattern in dresses for her Spring 2008 fashion line. She tries both to evoke Palestine, and she talks about it and she’s open about it, at the same time to avow that this is not ‘political.’ Without knowing anything about Nili Lotan, I would not necessarily want to condemn her for claiming that what she is doing is fashion and she’s not doing politics. That’s what fashion people do, is fashion.
[Slide] Paris Fashion Week, October 2007, which tells us what will be fashionable in spring and summer of 2008. [Slide] [Lauren Bush] once dated a Palestinian. She was not one of those people who was attacked by the right-wing blogs as a supporter of terrorism because she was wearing a keffiyeh. [Slide] This is notable for fact that this elderly activist [Karen Hess] chose to be photographed in a keffiyeh and that this photo appeared in The New York Times, again without comment on what she was wearing. Hess was known for her attacks on Julia Child as lacking in knowledge about cooking and knowing even less about culinary history. [Slide] Even the lovable and innocent Jonas Brothers. A bit later, one of the Jonas’ appears in a keffiyeh in an advertisement on the Disney Channel that you would’ve only seen if you were babysitting children. [Slide] Colin Farrell shows up at Sundance [Film Festival]. This is the Sundance where, you will remember, "Slingshot Hip-Hop," a film about Palestinian rappers, was screened. So, I don’t know. They may have shown up for those screenings.
There are lots of Mary Kate Olsen keffiyeh spottings in this period. This has at least something to do with the fact that it fits into her distinctive look. She’s actually smarter than you think. She’s known to be part of a fashion trend known by some as boho chic which emerged in mainstream women's fashion in 2003 and lasted through 2008. It is associated with the names like supermodel Kate Moss and actresses like the Olsen twins and Sienna Miller. According to Wikipedia: “Boho chic featured loose, flowing tops; loose flowing a-line skirts, often with uneven hemlines; and loose flowing a-line dresses, often with only one shoulder strap and/or an uneven hemline.” It’s kind of a hippy/gypsy/bohemian look. [Slide] Not clear why Meghan McCain was showing up in a keffiyeh during the primary campaigns. It was noticed by opponents of her father. [Slide] [David & Young] markets it as a “peace scarf.” [Slide] One of the first appearances of a keffiyeh-patterned hat.
[Slide] Fashion Week, Paris, March 2008. This is a fashion industry event that informs everyone in the industry about what is "in" and what is "out" for the coming season. The declaration is that this is “in” for fashion in fall 2008/winter 2009. [Slide] The is a so-called New Pashmina, the high-end Kashmiri scarf, that was becoming popular in 2006 or so, was been given new life by being worn keffiyeh style. Pashmina sometimes now functions as a synonym for keffiyeh. About this, the fashion blog Flypaper writes, “there’s a new way to wear scarves that’s almost universally foolproof – not knotted in a neat choker that ends up slipping round your neck, but folded into a big triangle at the front and tied, Middle-Eastern style. This is a cunningly brilliant route to prints and colours you wouldn’t otherwise be seen dead in, but know will cut a dash.” Note that it says Middle Eastern, not Palestinian style. According to RunwayDaily.com, this style of wearing scarves, based on the keffiyeh style developed on the street, has come to be known as the “triangle wrap.” [Slide] On the streets of Harlem. [Slide] Peter Wentz, more famous for his going around town than his music but maybe I’m wrong.
Another great moment in the keffiyeh story. In May 2008, television personality and Food Channel regular Rachael Ray appeared in an ad for Dunkin Donuts latté. Her neck wrapped in what looked to be a black and white keffiyeh. Right-wing commentators furiously criticized Dunkin' Donuts and Rachael Ray. Leading the charge was Michel Malkin, whom Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in 2008 named as one of the twelve leading Islamophobes in the U.S., a group FAIR labeled the “Dirty Dozen.” Malkin insisted that wearing the keffiyeh was no innocent act but participation in what she called, “jihadi chic,” a trend she had earlier called “hate couture”. The keffiyeh, she helpfully explained, had “come to symbolize the murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not so ignorant fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons.” Among those she attacked: [singer] Ricky Martin, [President of Venezuela] Hugo Chavez and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. They had all been attacked by Michel Malkin before, back in 2006. [Slide] Interestingly enough, she left out this famous shot of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo. This visit and this photo was very, very popular in Palestine.
Dunkin' Donuts quickly pulled the ad in question and apologized to anyone who might have been offended, all the while asserting that what Ray was wearing was no keffiyeh but simply a silk scarf with a paisley design. [Slide] You can see that they are actually correct. Nonetheless, the scarf, its pattern and colors, and the way in which Rachael Ray wore it, all clearly evoked the keffiyeh fashion. Michel Malkin praised Dunkin' Donuts' action, saying, “It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic Jihad and its apologists.” ‘The keffiyeh kerfuffle’, as Malkin called it--she has a way with language--received a great deal of mainstream media attention, the bulk of it critical of Malkin for going over the top. In his regular "Worst Person in the World" segment, for instance, liberal MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann named Michelle Malkin ‘worst person in the world’ for raising the terrorist chic charges. In a subsequent show he labeled Dunkin' Donuts “Worst Person” for caving in to the ‘fascists’ and what he called, “perhaps the most absurd idea the lunatic fringers have ever belched forth: that there are terrorist scarves.” On September 29, 2008, People magazine named the Dunkin' Donuts kerfuffle as one of the most memorable fashion moments of the year.
[Slide] Another minor keffiyeh kerfuffle occurred in May when Urban Outfitters removed the “Victimized” t-shirt, offered by Freshjive, after protests from Zionist activists in the Jewish community who variously labeled it Jew-hating and expressing support for terrorism. Freshjive owner Rick Klotz, who is actually Jewish, defended himself against the charge, arguing, “Is it not simply true that some Palestinians and especially Palestinian children are victims of this terrible conflict? I am of the opinion that they are.” He was met by another demonstration organized by the ultra-rightwing Jewish Defense League in L.A. against Freshjive and another of its t-shirts, this one [Slide].
[Slide] From Fredflare, with this announcement: "Unless you've been living under a rock somewhere, you've seen, or worn, this ubiquitous scarf. Now you can rock it all year long on a super comfy 100 percent cotton t-shirt by Newbreed Girl!" [Slides] These are a couple of more scarves worn in the patented keffiyeh style. We could call them perhaps faux keffiyehs. [Slide] The keffiyeh is so normalized that it could show up in a photo of a story about a North Carolina high school choir practice. [Slide] This is the one I really wanted, this cashmere scarf.
[Slide] It's rather surprising that there was no kerfuffle over this shirt from Dissizit, a street/hip-hop style clothing line. [Slide] Perhaps it's that there is no more mileage to be gained by associating Paris Hilton with scandal. What new would be in that? I’d like to talk about this t-shirt a little. No doubt the ‘Free Paris Hilton’ t-shirt is signifying on demands to free political prisoners, like Leonard Peltier or in the past, Huey Newton or Angela Davis. Paris, as we all remember, served 23 days in jail in 2007 for a parole violation for DUI [Driving Under the Influence] stuff. The keffiyeh pattern of her kerchief mask and her bikini plus the gun she shoulders would also appear to evoke iconic images of PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] militant and hijacker Leila Khaled from the early 1970s. And finally, the keffiyeh pattern on the bikini also seems to reference and play around with the much commented-upon runway appearance of Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen in a Che Guevara bikini in 2002.
[Slide] The keffiyeh is so everyday in the U.S. by now that you can find a rack of keffiyeh scarves of varied colors at the well-known Chicago department store Marshall's in December 2008. [Slide] In winter 2009, Urban Outfitters is still selling the keffiyeh, now marketed as a “Houndstooth Scarf,” referenced to one of the distinctive patterns of the keffiyeh. The Geronimo t-shirt seems to add to the progressive politics evoked here. Provocation, a hint of politics, is still on sale when you buy this scarf. [Slide] From Studiohomme, an online shopping site that features very high end men's fashion, such as comme des Garçons, established in February 2009. This product again is, unusually, marketed as a keffiyeh. [Slide] Another “girly” keffiyeh with hearts. Kate Moss' Topshop in Manhattan is still selling keffiyehs in New York City in May 2009. By spring 2009, keffiyeh as fashion, or high fashion as opposed to street style, seems to be petering out. [Slide] This is my last, chronologically speaking, celebrity keffiyeh spotting from this period, British artist and director Steve McQueen. He may be wearing one of those very expensive Galliano keffiyehs.
[Slide] A new wrinkle, my photographer friend Dave calls this ‘Harlem punk kufi’. Note the Ramones t-shirt. [slides] More keffiyeh street fashion. This is from New York City, September 2009. [Slide] This is from this February. I’ve become a great follower of a series by Bill Cunningham that’s in The New York Times and he heralded a new trend which he called “peacock” style which he was very excited about in February. And, of course, there was a keffiyeh there.
How has all this been interpreted by commentators? The most common story that emanates from both progressive activists with an investment in the keffiyeh's politics and more neutral observers hinges on the question of whether what was once a symbol of support for Palestine has been watered down, degraded if you will, by all the commercialization, massification, hipification and fashionization. Or, as Al Jazeera English journalist Riz Khan put it in a news segment on the keffiyeh, “Is it a political symbol or a fashion statement?” Many commentators assert that it is being worn mostly by people who have no idea what it really is and therefore it has evolved or devolved from a sign of political solidarity to an empty fashion accessory.
I want to raise questions about the underlying binary oppositions at work in such assessments, dualities that pit politics against fashion, street wear against commerce, celebrity against serious politics, the hard, black and white edge of masculinist militancy against the pretentious pastel glitz of the feminized runway [and] cool against fratboys. First, a brief history of the keffiyeh in the U.S. prior to the present moment, drawn for the most part from earlier work I have done, although now I have images. The keffiyeh first showed up in the U.S. during the late sixties and early seventies, worn by those working explicitly in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance movement, which as mentioned earlier, mobilized the keffiyeh as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Here are some iconic photos. [Slide] Arafat--I just learned this--people say he arranged it like a map of Palestine. [Slide] An unsympathetic cartoonist who is known for his illustrations for the books of Elie Weisel. He provides us with this commentary about what the ‘Keffiyeh really means: destruction of Israel’. [Slide] Leila Khaled, again, a typical poster of this era.
You found groups of keffiyeh-clad progressives marching, say, in the anti-imperialist contingent at the huge Vietnam antiwar demonstrations in DC in April 1971. [Slide] This is the one button I have that marks this era. I like it because it shows women wearing keffiyehs and they’re not wearing an ‘igal. And it’s kind of messing with the symbol, if you will. By the 1980s, and as the Palestinian issue gained wider support in the U.S. left, the keffiyeh became a common accessory for demonstrators and activists involved in the most important progressive struggles of the decade; the Central American solidarity movements and the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid campaigns. We should recall that the eighties was a period when there was really a lot of political activity going on. Noam Chomsky said there was more grassroots participation going on in the eighties than in the much more heralded sixties or seventies. I think he’s probably right. Keffiyehs were much more commonly worn in African-American communities and political mobilizations at this time.
The keffiyeh was so normalized on the left by the 1980s that it shows up in a Jennifer Berman 1987 cartoon published on the pages of the weekly left-wing U.S. newspaper, In These Times. Entitled “The American Leftist (Progressivus Sandinistis Supportoris),” the cartoon pokes gentle fun at the style of the stereotypical PC progressive activist, outfitted in “shapeless” wool cap and old overcoat, Salvation Army pants, a “Guatemalan bag” and a “Palestinian style scarf,” triangle in front. Fashion critic Fred Davis calls this sort of style ‘anti-fashion’. By winter 1983-84 at least, and perhaps as early as 80-81, the style had jumped from progressive circles to the urban street where it was widely worn by hip youths, the kind who dressed all or mostly in black and were the first whites to get into hip-hop. The epicenter of this scene was the downtown club the Roxy, started in 1982, which attracted diverse crowds, including the East Village hip elite and rappers from the South Bronx. Nina Lalli writes in the Village Voice in 2006 that in the eighties in New York City, “The scarves seemed to be for sale on almost every city street.” [There are] two well-known participants in that scene. First, Afrika Bambaata, hip-hop pioneer, featured performer at the Roxy and Madonna, who hung out with this crowd at the Roxy and played her first shows there. From Britain, post-punk band Delta 5, symptomatic of the important presence of the keffiyeh on progressive cultural scene in the UK [United Kingdom].
[Slide] "Born in Flames," a film about a feminist revolution within the revolution. By the way, Kathryn Bigelow, director of “The Hurt Locker”, plays one of the three female editors of the Socialist Youth newspaper, who eventually assert their solidarity with the Women's Army and the armed struggle. The model adopted by the Women's Army is the women guerillas fighting with the Polisario, for the liberation of Spanish Sahara from Morocco, who go into battle wearing keffiyehs. They look like Palestinians but they are actually Sahrawis.
In March 1988, shortly after the eruption of the first Palestinian intifada, both Time magazine and CBS News did reports on a local urban style that they had finally noticed because it looked like the same kind of scarves that were being worn by Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. They were on TV all the time during the intifada. Time, for the most part in its article, tries to argue that most people who wear the keffiyeh simply don't know about its political and Palestinian connotations.
[Slide] This picture on the jacket of Defunkt's 1988 album, and [Slide] this photo of a scene from Thirtysomething's first season, an episode from 1988, are further examples of the keffiyeh's penetration into hip, stylish circles.
During the nineties, the keffiyeh was still around, both on progressive circles--although there were no mobilizations in the nineties comparable to those of the eighties, at least not until the late nineties--and as hip street wear. Whereas in the eighties the item was mostly sold by street vendors, during the nineties it had also moved into local boutiques, especially those featuring ethnic wear. In early 1991, in the wake of an upsurge of patriotism during the first Gulf War, wearing the keffiyeh could make you vulnerable to violent attack, especially if you looked like an Arab. Nonetheless, it endured. There are some minor fashion designers who were using it but nothing as remarkable as what started to happen by the mid-aughts.
The essential point is that the keffiyeh wasn't simply a political symbol of Palestine solidarity until 2006 or 2007, when retailers, fashion designers, hipsters and celebrities got their hands on it and devalued it. Already, by the early 1980s, it was cool street fashion. The keffiyeh as a symbol of solidarity and the keffiyeh as a sign of hipness coexisted and interpenetrated for a period of over two decades prior to the current wave of keffiyeh hyper-fashion and hyper-visibility. There are fashionable radicals, despite the evidence of that cartoon you saw, and there are politicized hipsters. The fact that lots of urban young people wore keffiyehs in the eighties and may have thought it was just fashion or desirable because it was ethnic and had no idea about its history or provenance didn't prevent progressives from using it as a political sign. This should give us pause, then, if we are pessimistic about the current political status of keffiyehs.
I want to go even further and suggest that we might question the notion that there is an inherent opposition between politics and fashion. In my earlier work, I suggested that street style keffiyehs in the 1980s might not have been entirely apolitical. That it might have been used by some in a kind of oblique critique of and expression of dissent from official U.S. policy toward the Palestinians, as a kind of ironic embrace of a signifier of so-called terrorism, during the era that Edward Said dubbed the ‘great terrorism scare’, from 1983 to 1986. Consider then that in its early spring 2007 catalogue, Urban Outfitters sold the keffiyeh initially under the name, ‘Anti-war Scarf’. I would argue that doesn't that represent a retailer's attempt to try to make profit from the by then widespread dissent from [Former U.S. President George W.] Bush's war in Iraq, by marketing an item that is clearly associated with the Middle East and Arabs, with the ostensible ‘enemy’? Although it is correct that the name in a sense refuses to index Palestine, it is certainly correct that the keffiyeh was associated with anti-war sentiment. It was widely worn at demonstrations against the run-up to the Iraq war that mobilized hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and Europe.
There is a chronological gap in my images; the nineties. But the keffiyeh was around, a little less remarkable, getting sold now in boutiques, not just by street vendors. This history helps make sense of the appearance of the keffiyeh on Sting, during a visit to Cairo in 2001, and the fact that it shows up in an episode of “Sex and the City”, on a tank top Carrie wears in a scene first broadcast on February 2002, less than four months after 9/11; shot in New York City. [Slide] A few months before 9/11, in June 2001, Belgian designer Raf Simons, in his “Sometimes You Have to Fight for Your Freedom” line, featured keffiyehs and balaclavas and partially hidden faces. Commentators note that these are clear references to anti-globalization struggles, very big prior to 9/11. If you remember Seattle, keffiyehs present there, and militant environmental activists and anarchists and also evokes gangs. Again, a political connection and environment that shifts right before 9/11 that just changes radically after 9/11.
Moving now to the question of celebrities, I want to argue too that celebrity endorsement of keffiyehs does not necessarily mean the unthinking embrace of trendy fashion. I take issue here with Maytha, a writer for the irreplaceable Arab-American blog Kabobfest--which I’ve relied on a lot for getting these images and for information and I am in solidarity with them but I’m critical of this comment--who in October 2007 described famous keffiyeh wearers “like Justin Timberlake, David Beckham, Ashely-Mary-Kate Olsen [sic], Kirsten Dunst” as “trend-following celebrity lemmings” and “ignorant cultural consumers.” We might ask how does Maytha know that they are ignorant. Might they possibly have just a bit of subversiveness in them? Because there are, in fact, celebrities who have consciously acted on behalf of Palestine. For instance, Sting, who not only has been sighted wearing a keffiyeh, but in April 2001 played a concert in Cairo to raise money for Palestinian children to be dispersed through a British charity organization, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). More recently, in 2007, celebrities Kate Moss, Jemima Khan, Hugh Grant, Elton John, Elle McPherson, Jerry Hall, Jade Jagger and other stars participated in a London fundraising event put on by the Hoping Foundation, headed by Oxford lecturer Karma Nabulsi that raised 700,000 pounds for Palestinian children. [Slide] Kate Moss was girlfriend of Pete Dougherty of The Libertines, after whom, if you recall, one variety of keffiyeh shirt was named.
Among the celebrity participants in Hoping Foundation's June 2008 event, which raised 319,000 pounds, were Gwyneth Paltrow, Lou Reed, Stella McCartney (Paul's daughter), supermodel Lily Cole and Robbie Coltrane. American celebrities have been much less active than Brits. [Slide] Actress Cameron Diaz was sighted wearing a keffiyeh when she participated in Pangea Day in May 2008, a global film festival event organized by Jehane Noujaim, director of the documentary about Al-Jazeera, “Control Room.” Pangea Day advertizes itself as an internationalist and humanitarian event and so I think Diaz wearing this accessory, probably not just some ‘ignorant’ manifestation. Big demonstrations in January 2009 to protest Israeli offensive in Gaza. Annie Lennox, Bianca Jagger and Brian Eno were all there. During the inauguration party in DC last January in 2009, Ben Affleck buttonholed Rahm Emmanuel and gave him an earful about Gaza. He’s friends with Rahm Emmanuel. Rahm Emmanuel’s brother is Ben Affleck’s agent and apparently Affleck really cares a lot about this issue. I don't want to make too much here of the potential for progressive celebrity politics but I want to ask, if British activists can mobilize Kate Moss and Elton John for Palestinian charity, why aren't U.S. activists asking Lou Reed to play a concert for Palestinian children?
Kabobfest, however, has not made blanket condemnations of celebrity keffiyeh wearers. [Slides] Maytha, for instance, notes that keffiyeh-wearing rapper Lupe Fiasco, a Sunni Muslim, is probably not in the camp of “ignorant cultural consumers.” He’s just one of several African-American hip-hop and R&B artists, including Chamillionaire of Houston, Chris Brown, Jermaine Dupri, and The Cool Kids of Chicago, who have been sighted in keffiyehs. M1 of Ded Prez not only frequently dons the keffiyeh, he visited Gaza last December as part of the Viva Palestina delegation. White rapper and singer Everlast, is a Sunni Muslim, wears a keffiyeh pretty regularly. In addition, rap superstars Jay-Z and Kanye West have been spotted in what might be called faux keffiyeh scarves, without the distinctive checkered pattern, but worn keffiyeh, triangle wrap style. These sightings have been identified as keffiyeh sightings because of the resemblance. These guys might be tapped for philanthropic Palestinian fundraising. But we might ask why are all the 'good' celebrities black, the 'ignorant' ones white? [Slide] Hip-hop artists Chamillionaire and DJ Spooky and Ded Prez were spotted hanging out with Palestinian rappers DAM at Sundance in January 2008. But so too did Quentin Tarantino. Does he have sympathies that might be exploited?
A related area of critique concerns the demographic of the hipster. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the keffiyeh has become one of those styles that has become very much associated with stereotypical images of the hipster. My computer dictionary offers a pretty serviceable definition of the hipster: “a person who follows the latest trends in fashion.” This captures some of what makes this an ambiguous social category. Hipsters are up-to-date and cool but they are followers who moreover follow en masse rather than being the trendsetters. Hipsters try to live on the cutting edge but they are constantly on the lookout for the new one where they will migrate in a moment's notice. Perhaps because of this obvious contradiction, and also because another key characteristic of the hipster is that no one seems to want to define themselves as a hipster, there exists a popular and widespread spectator sport of mocking hipsters.
Here are some slides that are favorable to hipsters from a Flickr. [Slide] This is Ms. 2005: the Fauxhemian, from Paste magazine's feature on "The Evolution of the Hipster, 2000-09," in its November '09 issue, one of those decade retrospectives that we got sick of a couple of months ago. The "Apple Store Indie," is from Yourscenesucks.com, from its rogue gallery of ridiculous ‘scenesters’, i.e., hipsters. It’s lengthy and mean-spirited commentary includes the following: “Masking her love for Steve Jobs products with whatever your blind grandma wore 40 years ago, she blends in seamlessly with the rest of her contemporaries at All Points West Festival.” Note that it names the keffiyeh. Finally, the website Lookatthisfuckinghipster.com, devoted to photos of and commentary on ridiculous examples of hipsterdom. You are invited to post your own photos. On this site, there are lots of shots of so-called hipsters in keffiyehs and the keffiyeh seems to be one of the signifiers of the laughable hipster. And this commentary is typical.
One of the keffiyeh issues that revolves around hipsterdom is the claim that the keffiyeh used to be a trendy item but it is now so common, so banal, that it has definitively ceased to be cool. This is the view of Jay Hukahori. The problem is that so many hipsters, who otherwise are defined by a lemming-like devotion to drop the latest thing at a moment's notice for the next latest thing, seem to stick to the keffiyeh. So unhipster of them.
Verena Von Pfetten, Senior Editor of Lifestyle and Entertainment for Air America Media proclaimed in the Huffington Post in September 2008 that, “If Rachel [Rachael] Ray is wearing something in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial it's most definitely no longer cool.” The is from her commentary about “seven hipster fashions that are old and tired and need to be hastened to the dungheap.” The keffiyeh is the villain of the piece, “the item that even fratboys, for Christ's sake, are now wearing, but that hipsters cling to irrationally.” In a cover story in summer '08 for the activist, consumption-critical magazine Adbusters in summer 2008 (#79), entitled “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” Douglas Haddow worried over both what has happened to the keffiyeh politically and what that implies for youth culture's creativity and vitality. Haddow's gloomy conclusion is that whereas the keffiyeh used to be worn to “express solidarity with Palestinians,” it is now a “completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.” For Haddow, the keffiyeh is the quintessential sign of the empty, vapid and the essentially defeated character of the urban hipster subculture. As Danish alternative rock band Lack summarized this sort of criticism so well in one of their songs from their 2008 album “Saturate Every Atom,” “Indie kids wear the keffiyeh but can't spell PLO.”
And then there is Sonja Jones, writing for the Mother Jones blog in June 2009, who blames the demise of the Palestinian keffiyeh industry--there is only one factory in Palestine that produces them--on hipsters. Dating the keffiyeh wearing in the U.S. back to the first intifada, according to her, it was “hipsters insatiable lust for the scarf” after the second intifada of 2000 that, “lured Chinese manufacturers into the gig.” Ten years later, ‘the Chinese dominate production” and, Jones writes, “Ironically, global support for Palestinian-statehood-as-fashion-accessory-item has put yet another nail in the coffin of the Occupied Territories' beleaguered economy.” It’s all the hipsters fault. I think you should blame the peace process and put pressure on the [Palestinian Authority] PA to support the industry. Thank you.
Dr. Ted Swedenburg is Professor of Anthropology at University of Arkansas.
This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.