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'Where am I in this story?' By Aviva Lori Tags: Israel News lana Efrati's clothing store, on the northern section of Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv always looks closed. That, at least, is the impression one gets. But if you are persistent, and make an appointment, you should be able to meet with the fashion designer within a month or two for a preliminary talk, which might end with a purchase. When her longtime clients want a new item of her design they call her in Italy, and Efrati flies to Israel to meet with them, one at a time, in the depths of the boutique. It's local haute couture, very discreet, very European. From the outset, Efrati aimed at an audience that was not looking for fashion in the "trendy" sense of the word. What she offered in return, for those who were willing to go with her all the way, were clothes for the duration, expensive and demonstratively unlabeled. Five years ago, at the height of her career and of the economic boom, she abruptly dropped everything and went off to realize another fantasy. She and her partner, Shlomi Rosenboim, bought a ruined estate in the central Italian region of Umbria, south of Tuscany, and together with their daughter, Or, settled at the farthest point on the road that leads to Petroro, a village with three streets, one small square and two grocery stores - the end of the world even by Israeli standards. Since the move, she has lived her life in two realms: Italy and Israel. Soft dream and hard reality. Designing fashions in Tel Aviv and growing vegetables, olives and grapes in Umbria. As such, Efrati has joined a trend of people who relocate in the middle of life and transform fantasy into reality, renovations into bestsellers. Erez Komorovsky, founder of the hugely successful Lehem Erez chain of bakeries-cum-restaurants, did it in Upper Galilee. Peter Mayle, a British advertising man who moved to Provence and wrote a wildly popular book about his experiences there, "A Year in Provence," drew hordes of Britons, Americans and others to that area (The book also became a television miniseries). Advertisement Next to be "discovered" was Tuscany, by Frances Mayes, a poet and professor, whose "Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy" became a worldwide bestseller and was made into a movie. She bought an old house in Cortona and showed the world the magic formula of how to make money from house renovations. An Israeli couple, Beth Elon, a literary agent, and Amos Elon, the journalist and writer, were years ahead of Mayes. They bought an estate in Tuscany 30 years ago, during which time Beth has written a few books on Tuscany and its culinary delights. Not writing a book Efrati is not yet writing a book. She is too busy discovering new types of tomatoes and other delights. "Self-withdrawal" is the word she uses for the long road she took from the heart of urbanity to a remote rural existence. "In 2001 I asked myself what I want to do now," she relates. "The ability to ask questions is a privilege, and both of us [she and her partner] were engaged in some sort of search. We travel a great deal, both because of my work and because we like to travel. What was most fascinating for us was to become acquainted with new worlds. I had a dream like that from childhood - to live in many places. And then it started to knock on my door." Many people have a dream like that, but few are able to make it come true. "Almost everyone can do it. It's a personal thing. I am ready to make an effort for it. I agree that it is definitely not simple. You have a career, succeed, you are known, you have customers, and then you get up and go. But I told myself that I have to free myself and not become a slave to myself. The path I was following had a certain rhythm to it, and from that rhythm I started to ask myself: 'Where am I in this story?' "When it started to jab, it was like a wire that gets into your head and spins and sometimes grabs you and sometimes disappears. I asked myself how long I had to go on doing what I was doing. Some people never ask, they keep at it until they are 80. Not me. I find the dynamics of thinking like this fascinating and stimulating. True, it's not easy to go to a new place, learn a language and customs, but that is exactly what does it for me. For me, having new and unexpected experiences is like parachuting into an unknown place." Efrati and Rosenboim landed in Umbria by chance, she says. It could have been Upper Galilee, too. "At first we thought of France, because we had been there a lot, but in the end we decided on Italy because we were there at least five times a year - that's where I buy my textiles. By the same token, if I had been working with Barcelona or with Portugal, maybe I would have fallen in love with those places. Opportunities in life are like a fork in the road: You can only choose one at each juncture. I personally am more enthusiastic about Umbria than about Tuscany, because I prefer places or things that are less in vogue." After contacting local real-estate agents, the couple searched intensively in the area of the medieval city of Todi. "It was a process that took a few years," Efrati says. "Getting there is also interesting. You meet people, see places. We looked at dozens of homes, most of which we disqualified for all kinds of reasons." They combed the area hill by hill, looking at a long series of crumbling ruins, until one day they stopped and said: This is it. "We were on top of a hill and we saw something, a place of light and nature and air to breathe, and it happened to be available." The 20-dunam (5-acre) estate was formerly a farm, and it possesses a central stone house and another structure that was a sty. After World War II, many Italian farmers left the rural regions to look for work in the cities. Their homes and fields were forsaken. Efrati's villa, too, was abandoned and in ruins. "We renovated from the foundation," she says. "We had more or less only the stone walls. We restored everything as it had been, according to the lines of the building. It took a few years, all done by local workers." What do you actually do there? "It's hard to explain. Sometimes I am just idle. People need time for themselves. Time to develop. In the 1980s, the Italians invented the slow food movement to combat fast food. The idea was to say, 'Excuse me, I am eating now,' but it went beyond food. It became a way of life, which I find very congenial, because if you don't notice the way and just keep running and running, the road will end before you feel it." Making olive oil for the first time "For most people," she continues, "their identity is work, and it was for me, too. But today I feel that it's fine to do other things. It's enriching. I now read a great deal. In Tel Aviv I never had time to finish a book. I walk in the forest to look at flowers; every month there are new flowers. Afterward the forest fills up with animals. To live in nature is an experience that is still thrilling for me. I work in the garden. We planted olive trees and took care of them from the start, and this year we made olive oil for the first time. We went to an olive press and placed the oil in a container so it could rest a little. Later we will bottle it. "It's a powerful experience to move from the city to nature. When I worked, I created clothes that were suitable for a steady climate, where there is always air conditioning and people have no idea what is really happening outside. Here I rediscovered what I knew as a girl. The seasons of the year. My vegetable patch is a philosophy of life, a biological organic method. It is a whole doctrine. What to plant, when, what goes with what, because I do not want to spray. This is clean farming. We eat only what we grow in season. In the summer we eat tomatoes, afterward cucumbers and zucchini. Now there is lettuce and cabbage and broccoli, and soon I will plant garlic and onion. It is a riveting experience. Like stitching clothes." And if at the end of the day you feel like having an espresso at the corner cafe, what do you do? "I have a machine in the house." A villa in Tuscany or Umbria is not only for the very rich, Efrati says. "Every apartment in Tel Aviv is more expensive than what I paid." However, she is not willing to disclose the cost of the estate (estimates are between $150,000 and $200,000). "Renovations are also within reach. It depends on you. I did something very authentic, attentive to the sources, based on the way of life of poor Italians." The villa has guest rooms, which in the meantime are only for friends. In the future this might become a source of income. Next year they will start to harvest grapes and make wine, initially for their own consumption. Efrati's daughter is studying modern history at the University of Bologna. Shlomi, a marketing man by profession, continues to do consulting, sometimes via telecommuting and sometimes flying to Israel to meet clients face to face. "The idea was to lower the gear. He also likes doing things around the house. We do many things together." At first Efrati was going to liquidate the business. "People, clients for years, heard about it and told me that I must on no account shut down. Then I found myself moving back and forth, living in a village and working in the city. I don't work in Italy. I only buy raw materials, attend exhibitions and prepare knit clothes patterns, but I make the clothes in my workshop in Israel. I give the seamstresses instructions, communicate with my clients by e-mail and come to meetings that I have set up." Even when her shop was open all the time, it looked almost empty. Efrati's line is, "more or less," three pairs of pants, four jackets, three blouses and a dress or two. The colors are melancholy. Brown, black, sand yellow, white and dark blue. "I don't do fashion," she says. "I do things I will still love if I see them in another few months or years. That is why I do not consider myself a fashion designer according to the regular definitions. I am designing a product that is called clothes, and I fit it to the body of the person the same way I would design packaging." Craft roots Ilana Efrati, 51, was born in the Dan neighborhood of Tel Aviv to parents who were both artisans. Her father was an iron craftsman who worked for Israeli military industries; her mother was involved with textiles for the Kitan company. "Things were always being made at home," she says. "I thank them both for that; these are roots that are drawn from them. In my grandmother's attic, I found all kinds of old lace and souvenirs from all kinds of places around the world. I acquired my understanding of raw materials and the culture of food from my maternal grandfather. He was from Samarkand and lived in the Bukharan neighborhood of Jerusalem." She studied art and painting at a branch of the WIZO schools network, and intended to become a graphic designer. "But I didn't like the idea that it was commissioned work, according to what the client wants." She almost never managed to do what people asked. "I am an autodidact. I don't like being taught. It was the same in high school - I studied only what I liked. Nothing else. Instead, I read books. Between us, not everything that was taught in high school was important to know." She left her work in graphics and started to look around. That brought her to the world of textiles. Twenty-five years ago, Efrati opened an atelier on Tel Aviv's Ruppin Street, and decided to move into the big time straight off. "The idea was to create a collection like they do in Europe, in showroom style, invite a few shops that represent quality and offer it to them. I decided to import textiles, at first from Paris, later from Italy, because raw materials are very important for me. I hired a seamstress and started to work." Two years later, Efrati opened the shop on fashionable Dizengoff Street. She was the first in the area, but was followed by Tovale, Comme il Faut, Gershon Bram, Raziela, Yaron Minkovsky, Hagara and others. The area had the magical atmosphere of an elite army unit and a flavor of overseas, which was also felt in the prices. Efrati protests against her reputation as being very expensive. "The materials I use are expensive and high-quality," she explains, "but my prices as compared with the market are not high. It's a myth that was created around me. Even now my pants cost no more than NIS 2,000. The colors are very classical, so you don't have to change them every year. The question is always how often you have worn a garment. That is the correct way to price it - divide the price by the number of times the garment is worn." In the mid-1990s, in an effort to temper the prestige image, Efrati developed a new line called "Aleph. Aleph." The graphic design recalled the logo of Ata, the now moribund clothing chain that was long dominant in Israel. Nostalgia, she says, does it for her. "The closure of Ata was the end of textiles in Israel - it all became real estate - and it was important for me to pay homage to these people, who did textiles in this country. I took the idea of the letters from clothes that belonged to my father and I used the coarse materials of Ata." Efrati was the first in Israel to produce catalogs showing women who were not models. The concept of stylized catalogs bearing a didactic and feminist message was later adopted by other fashion designers. She offers a cautious assessment of the fashion industry in Israel. "Our fashion world is frenetic, has no forbearance and does not want to make the effort to preserve things. There is a style here of young designers who have an untailored line, with simpler cuts. There is a certain common denominator of the people who work here. A trend. The audience is part of the trend and cooperates with it. To be outside the trend is far more complicated. And I was always outside the trend." Are your clients also outside the trend? "My client is a woman with her own personality, a type of self-criticism and an opinion. It's clear that if she is very trendy, she will not find a great deal in my establishment. Because my client has to have sufficient self-confidence to come to the office, for example, and not feel that she made a mistake because the other girls are wearing what is trendy and she is not. It goes beyond fashion and touches on sociology. In Israel everyone talks about being an individualist and everyone wants to be an individualist, but in practice they are not. They are much more of a herd. They do the same things, go to the same places, the same hair stylist, the same fashion designer, and use the same catering service. It's hard to be distinctive in Israel. The ability to self-withdraw demands a great deal of energy." The subdued tones of her garments and the solid cuts suit Efrati's introverted character. She is assertive in work but not in selling. "I find it humiliating to exploit people's weaknesses. A woman can be a gifted lawyer but have a weakness for shopping, say, and the fashion designers take advantage of that. I will give my clients only what I would make for myself. I do not fake things in order to sell. That is my way." Why are your colors so gloomy? "I set myself limits and that means that I have to try harder to find solutions within the boundaries I set. I am interested in nuances and see no reason to go wild in order to achieve something. As a matter of fact, in the summer I use blue and white, but not garish colors. I do not want my garment to dominate you so that you disappear within it, because afterward people remember the woman who wore the floral dress and not the person. That is Italian chic. It deals with the details and the nuances but using quieter colors. Gray, for example, is a color with many interesting hues. I would never work with red, yellow or green. The shades on the margins interest me far more. There is a great deal of room in the margins and I feel fine there, so why should I move to the middle?" 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Read & React IDF recommends major, but brief Gaza ground offensive Responses: 52 Ari Shavit: Israelis who blame Israel are not helping Palestinians Responses: 49 Roi Ben-Yehuda: Pro-Israel camp would be wise to heed Muslim cries for peace Responses: 24 Israel Harel: Like it did in Lebanon, Israel blinked first in Gaza Responses: 21 Poll: Majority of Israelis support continuing military operations in Gaza Responses: 20 Haniyeh: Palestinian victory in Gaza is near Responses: 60 More Headlines 16:18 IAF strike in Gaza kills top Hamas political-military link 17:03 Gaza rocket barrage hits Negev; direct strike on 8-floor Ashdod residence 13:57 Olmert: Israel has no interest in a prolonged war in Gaza 14:48 IDF recommends major, but brief Gaza ground offensive 13:27 Get up to the minute coverage of the warfare in Gaza directly to your email 15:03 Poll: Most Israelis support continuing Gaza military op 15:02 Israelis who blame Israel are not helping the Palestinians 15:01 Like in Lebanon, in Gaza Israel blinked first 11:04 IN PICTURES / Israel battles Hamas in Gaza: Day six 13:57 AMIRA HASS / Thousands of Gazans near Rafah displaced by IAF bombing of tunnels 16:29 Twelve Palestinians hurt in Gaza fighting being treated in Israeli hopsitals 11:32 Top aide to Barak: IDF aiming to stop Gaza rocket fire, not crush Hamas 13:57 U.S. balks at Arab push for UN resolution to impose Gaza truce 02:13 Haniyeh: Palestinian victory in Gaza is near 06:48 ANALYSIS / What are Israel's options in the Gaza Strip? 21:05 WATCH: YouTube pulls some IDF videos showing Gaza assault 06:45 Israeli bloggers try to counter anti-Israel Russian media bias Previous Editions Select Day 31 dec 30 dec 29 dec 28 dec 26 dec 25 dec 24 dec 23 dec 22 dec 21 dec 19 dec 18 dec

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