Traditional Dress (Thobe)

About this Brooklyn Icon

The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

For centuries, Palestinian women and girls have used thobes (traditional embroidered dresses) to express localized connections to their homelands, sociopolitical contexts, collective histories, and diverse lived experiences. By the early 20th century, when this thobe was made, dressmaking had become a distinctive marker of regional identity, with site-specific variations in fabrics, tatreez embroidery designs and techniques, silhouettes, and embellishments. This exceptional examplespeaks to the importance of preserving and sharing Palestinian heritage amid ongoing forced displacement and attempted cultural erasure .

Adorned with embroidered motifs from the al-Khalil (Hebron) region throughout, this thobe also features designs from Gaza on the back, including amulets for good luck and the sarw cypress tree, or tree of life, symbolizing resilience. The dress incorporates indigo majdal fabric from north Gaza, gold and red saya fabric from Syria, and a tricolor silk appliqué typical of al-Khalil on the front. Its unique blend of geographically distinct materials and tatreez suggests that this pre-1920s thobe is from an affluent village located between al-Khalil and Gaza, which was ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba(catastrophe) and subsequent establishment of the Israeli state. Unlike many thobes, which evolve as they pass through generations of makers and wearers, this dress remains unaltered. It thus provides unique insights into the rich legacies of Palestinian women and girls’ cultural life.