Yasmeen Mjalli, the founder and creative director of Nöl Collective, has never met the women who weave the Majdalawi fabric she uses in her collections. It is a notable exception to the close, in-person relationships she has cultivated with her suppliers. Despite living in Ramallah, a city only about 50 miles from Gaza, communication with the women who live within this besieged coastal strip takes place solely over WhatsApp. Gaza is described by humanitarians as an “open-air prison” – Israeli laws mean Gazans are rarely allowed out of the city, and other Palestinians who live in the West Bank are even less likely to be allowed in.
Majdalawi fabric, which is woven using a single treadle loom [a foot-operated machine], originates from the Palestinian village of al-Majdal Asqalan. The village was occupied by Israeli forces in 1948, its inhabitants were made refugees, and the centuries-old practice would have died out if not for a cultural preservation project that set up a handful of studios in Gaza in the 90s. This artisan is one of the local women’s cooperatives that Nöl Collective works with to create sustainable, stylish clothes that blend traditional Palestinian designs with modern, fashionable cuts that wouldn’t look out of place in a Scandinavian storefront.

Nol, which means “loom” in Arabic, was born out of the ashes of a previous project which was also founded out of a desire for community, following Mjalli’s experiences of sexual harassment. In 2017, she began hosting support workshops for women who had experienced abuse, as well as selling T-shirts with feminist slogans such as “not your habibti” – habibti means “my love” – through Instagram. After a couple of years, a thorny question arose: how