Olivia Rodrigo gives Palestinian fashion brand a lifeline

American singer-songwriter and actress Olivia Rodrigo commissioned a custom-made dress from a Palestinian fashion label that was on the brink of shutting down as it struggled to operate under Israeli restrictions in the occupied West Bank.

Rodrigo turned to Nöl Collective, the Ramallah-based brand founded by Palestinian designer Yasmeen Mjalli, to create the dress for her inaugural Daisy Chain Fields Music Festival in California late last month.

The pale pink raw-silk minidress featured traditional Palestinian tatreez embroidery, with birds and flowers hand-stitched by Palestinian artisans in the occupied West Bank.

Mjalli described Rodrigo's commission as "divine intervention", saying it arrived as she was questioning whether Nöl Collective could continue operating.

"I was genuinely like, maybe we should stop, maybe this is our last effort. I was just so tired," she told Vogue Arabia.

In the same week Rodrigo made contact, a shipment of naturally dyed, handwoven wool that Nöl had ordered from India for its autumn collection was destroyed after being held for months by Israeli customs.

Mjalli then tried to travel to Jerusalem to find replacement fabric, but was turned back after the Israeli army closed roads out of Ramallah.

"We are unique in the sense that we have unfathomable restrictions in our movement and what we can do," she said.

With less than a week to make Rodrigo's dress, Mjalli instead sourced raw silk available in Ramallah before taking it to artisans in Bethlehem.

A journey from Ramallah to Bethlehem that would ordinarily take around 90 minutes took three hours because of Israeli checkpoints.

The dress passed through nine pairs of hands during production, including Palestinian embroiderers Um Musa and Um Mohammad, before another obstacle emerged: no local courier could get the finished garment to California in time.

Two strangers eventually volunteered to carry the dress in their luggage and hand-delivered it to Los Angeles.

Nöl Collective, founded in 2020, works with women's cooperatives, family-run sewing workshops and individual embroiderers across Palestine, incorporating traditional Palestinian craftsmanship into contemporary designs.

Mjalli said the situation has become even more difficult since Israel revoked work permits for Palestinian labourers following 7 October 2023, depriving households across the occupied West Bank of crucial income and pushing more women towards embroidery work.

For some families, she said, Nöl remains their only source of income.

"We keep going so that the community continues to thrive," Mjalli said.

The company operates amid an increasingly violent crackdown on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, where Israeli military raids and settler attacks have intensified, while communities have faced forced expulsions and property demolitions. The escalating violence has prompted several Western countries to place sanctions on Israeli settlements.

Mjalli described Rodrigo wearing the Palestinian-made dress on such a prominent stage as a victory that went beyond fashion.

"Fashion is political no matter where you are," she said. "We're still here, we have not been forgotten."

She also said Rodrigo wearing Nöl Collective felt like a natural extension of the singer's political expression, adding: "Your political views as a punk rocker should include Palestine."

Rodrigo has also been outspoken over Israel's nearly three-year genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 73,600 people, mostly civilians.

In a May interview on The New York Times' Popcast, Rodrigo was asked about using her platform to speak out politically, including on Gaza.

She said she made a conscious effort to stay informed but acknowledged that she was not an expert on geopolitics, describing her role as an artist as expressing honestly how events made her feel.

"I think it would just be disingenuous to be like, I don't feel heartbroken about what's going on in Gaza," Rodrigo said.

"As an artist, I feel like that's just what you do," she added, before saying she always felt she "could be doing more and saying more".