The Y2K NY brand dressing Bella Hadid in a Keffiyeh (2024)

24May 2024

In case you missed it, yesterday [May 23] Bella Hadid stepped out between Cannes Film Festival red carpet appearances in a red Keffiyeh dress. The supermodel, who is half-Palestinian on her father’s side, was undoubtedly showing her support for the people of Palestine, who right now, are being killed by Israeli forces in their masses.

Crafted from traditional red and white checked fabric and draped around the body to become an asymmetric slip, the garment was the work of New York upstarts Michael Sears and Hushidar Mortezai, the designers behind radical 00s label Michael & Hushi. Dropped as part of their AW01 collection, the look appeared in countless editorials, and proved as controversial in 2001 as it has across social media in the last twelve hours.

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Though fashion is often lambasted as a frivolous industry, as Hadid well knows, the clothing we wear can wield significant political power, and though many have pointed out the piece resembles a Jordanian Keffiyeh rather than a Palestinian one, her message was clear.

“In a time of genocide and oppression Bella is not afraid to show her roots –no one should be,” explains Mortzecai, who is Iranian-American. “She works the media to share her message and her voice, and that is incredible. Hers is a message of love, survival, and unity, and so is mine. That is the embodiment of this Michael & Hushi vintage dress.”

According to Mortezai, Hadid wearing the dress came about when a photographer friend, Yasmine Diba, pulled it randomly with the idea she might one day capture the model in it. “My mom had it hand cleaned, repaired any damage, and gave it to her for a possible project in the future,” he says. Little did he know it would be one of the most impactive looks of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, standing out in a sea of generic sequined gowns and slick but safe suits.

Here, he talks us through the look, working as an Iranian-American designer pre- and post-9/11, and the importance of using fashion as a statement.

Hey Hushi! Could you tell us a little about who you are and your label please?

Hushi Mortezai: Yes! I’m an Iranian-American and Micheal [Sears] is from Las Vegas. I left Iran when I was almost three and grew up in the States. I returned to Iran after 28 years and I fell in love with my culture and the way women in particular were so strong yet so glamorous and how they also used fashion as social defiance. I saw women and girls brave morality police using their hijab to assert their bodily autonomy, I saw the strength of Afghan refugees, I saw the strength of Kurdish women. I had those typical return-to-homeland diasporic reawakenings. My father was a humanitarian and taught me about the struggle of many people, including those of Palestine, when I was a child.

After the trip, I returned to New York where I was living, creating, and had a very small silver store in the east village with Michael from 1997 to 2002. We are both self taught and Michael's innate technical abilities are what made this handkerchief hem dress .He did construction, I did textiles, hand-painting and styling, and we came together in west meets east fashion. Our work was conceptual, pop, against the norm, but always about celebration and the art of fashion.

“​​A lot of our work ripped the piss, but the media didn't get that and there are many articles that said we had women in chadors with machine guns on our runway. There were no guns, no ammo – neither of us ever believed in that. The work took the stereotypes presented by the media and threw it back in their face” – Hushidar Mortezai

What was the inspiration for the AW01 collection, which featured the Keffiyeh dress?.

Hushi Mortezai: The inspiration for this collection was based on all those things coming together, and our very first runway show was staged with only $5K. But specifically the inspiration was a square scarf, and using that square and translating it into handkerchief hem dresses, skirts, etc. We created "square" ruffles using some scarves brought over from my trip along with other textile designs I created –delicate sheer lace printed with stereotypical images of what it is to be Middle Eastern, and slogans refashion into a revolution of love. We held a mirror and reflected it, deflected it, and turned it inside-out.

Michael constructed everything by hand, including the curl-toe high heels. The show was also inspired by the strength of women and celebrating the beauty of women in Iran and the entire Middle East, and how women are Orientalised, commodified, objectified, othered, and stereotyped by both the West and the East, as well as the Islamophobia they face.

The collection was a naive love letter to all those wonder women. in the pre-internet and pre-social media fashion era, here was no representation for anyone from the region that dared to translate any part of the Middle East in a modern language for future generations.

Who was the model that wore the look in the runway show? Did she have any connection to the region?

Hushi Mortezai: The model who wore that particular look is Noemie Ditzler. She was chosen because she had a very strong grace and understood the love and the history that went into the dress. This was our very first show – it was a scary step forward and we did it with no money. So we had a very small group of models available to us – we also had our friends model in the show. There was not one model of any kind of Swana descent 24 years ago [that we could cast to wear the dress] – trust me, we searched and searched.

What was the reaction to the collection like back then? I’ve seen some choice articles it was featured in [see above]…

Hushi Mortezai: The labels used were often tongue-in-cheek but in actuality quite prejudiced. That Keffiyeh fabric, and any sort of Persian or Arabic writing on anything, equaled terrorism to the Western media. There was zero representation for creatives from the region or anyone supporting those aesthetics. My friends created [Middle Eastern creative magazine] Bidoun around that time, and they were the only ones to do it back then.

A lot of our work ripped the piss, but the media didn't get that and there are many articles that said we had women in chadors with machine guns on our runway, but there were no guns, no ammo –neither of us ever believed in that. The work took the stereotypes presented by the media and threw it back in their face.

“​​Our second show was slated for the Friday after 9/11 [at NYFW] and we had RSVPs from Barneys, Bergdorfs etc, but that day, everything changed. New York was shut down so we had to shut our own store – lots of businesses were leaving the city” – Hushidar Mortezai

You mentioned in an email we exchanged when I approached you for this interview that you lost your business post-9/11. Can you tell me a little more about this?

Hushi Mortezai: It’s strange –we feel like we are living in another post 9/11 world forever, so there is a little PTSD stirred up seeing Bella in this dress and all the online hate she is getting. Though AW01 was our first runway show, we’d done a lot of other looks before and received a lot of critical recognition and press, albeit myopic. Our little store was doing almost okay.

Our second show was slated for the Friday after 9/11 [at NYFW] and we had RSVPs from Barneys, Bergdorfs etc, but that day, everything changed. New York was shut down so we had to shut our own store – lots of businesses were leaving the city. We continued to have creative little shows for the next four years until 2004, but we couldn’t afford to buy the Italian Vogue Linda Evangelista was wearing our head-to-toe leather Ronald McDonald-inspired outfit in.

I can't be sure about the prejudice [bringing the business down] because I was not the most business savvy and made many mistakes. After 9/11, this entire new language [we created] was untouchable and deemed dangerous. We wanted to push something new forward but it wasn't the time. It feels like that attack mode and rabidity [is happening] all over again and what’s missing is nuance –everything is black and white still. The only absolute is don't kill other people. I feel like I dragged my friend Michael, a true visionary, down with my personal choices about my roots.

In the end, we both left New York – I went to LA, and Mike went back home to Vegas. I got more into being an artist with fashion as my medium, creating a new language for Iranian youth in the US. Now I’m going into restoration, land stewardship, and native gardening. I feel like identity has become so divisive and the last fight [anybody is concerned about] is the fight for Planet Earth.

Why was it important to you to make such strong statements through fashion, particularly when it was so detrimental to getting a small business up and running?

Hushi Mortezai: Yes they were political statements, but they were art, they were free, they were a love letter to home and displacement, but here, washed ashore in California and NYC. Also at the time there was no one yelling at you for every tiny thing you did wrong. For example, that the Keffiyeh [we used for the dress] is from Jordan not Palestine – something I am very happy to learn!

It was the establishment and the art kids, not all the divisions within. The Woman Life Freedom movement has been an incredible journey of strength and courage in Iran –that is the ultimate political fashion statement and it has inspired the world. The Keffiyeh is about solidarity. When I see memes that the Keffiyeh being worn by the students is an act of terrorism, yes it's important to make these statements!

The dress that Bella wore is a one of a kind look and represented a rebirth in my life at the height of self-expression. I realise that there are many incredible Palestinian designers who are also wearing their hearts on their sleeves today – they should be revered.