Tula The Boutique Now Offering Clothing For Women And Men - Surf City, Nj - The Sandpaper

Milwaukee Public Museum show explores relationship between Muslim clothing, identity

Since first opening its doors, the multifaceted complex that makes up Tula the Boutique has seen several renovations, including a candy and gelato store. The most recent addition to the store is the menswear, which has been in the works since the winter of 2013 and was released just three weeks ago. I feel like every purchase that we have is by chance because no one knows the menswear is there yet, Mesanko said. According to Mesanko, they are tentatively planning to hold a fashion show on Wednesday, July 16, that will not only showcase the new womens wear for the summer season, but also debut the new mens clothing lines. Mesanko said she is planning on having the grand opening of the store either the day before or the day after the menswear fashion show. In preparing for adding new clothing lines, whether for the womens or mens section of the store, Mesanko said she turned to a lot of different media outlets websites, magazines, television fashion showssuch asProject Runway and even European fashion shows to help narrow down to the unique styles she was looking for.

Middle Eastern scholar Iman Saca, whose mother founded the Center for Palestinian Heritage and Embroidery Preservation in Bethlehem, spoke on the history and symbolism of the art, and the importance of such exhibits in keeping that history alive. "Every stitch, every color, every design had meaning," said Saca, director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. "And hopefully, we can preserve that meaning." The exhibit is a collaboration between the Arab and Muslim Women's Research and Resource Institute and the Milwaukee Public Museum. It was financed in part with a $10,000 grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council. The show is a glimpse at the diversity of Wisconsin's Muslim community, through the lens of fashion. It features 30 traditional garments, jewelry, accessories and other artifacts from a wide swath of the Muslim world, divided into five regions: Bilad al-Sham, which encompasses modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territories; the Gulf States; North Africa; South Asia; and Turkey. It's a visual feast of color and texture, from the velvet and embroidered Palestinian mallakas to the flowing abayas of Saudi Arabia and the silk sari and gauzy shalwar kameezes of India and Pakistan. All of the items were donated by members of the local Muslim community. Many have been passed down from mother to daughter or were specially made by seamstresses in their countries of origin. Some feature designs unchanged for centuries; others reflect a kind of globalization of design with the melding of motifs across cultures.

Ethiopian Women Make Most of Zero-Interest Loans | Womens eNews

Dakutye's Story Thirty-year-old Dakutye Darcho, one of our borrowers, is a perfect example. When we ask her how she used her microloan she said she was eager to explain but couldn't stop working. So we meet in the hut that used to be her home and is now her "bakery." She is barefoot and wears torn clothes. While we talk, she makes round after round of injera, a sourdough flatbread with a spongy texture that is a national food here. The work requires her to rotate her arm in a circular motion over a pan as she stands above a fire that she constantly feeds with dried grass. Before her first $100 loan, Darcho and her husband served as middlemen for locally grown crops, usually maize and sweet potatoes, traveling to nearby villages to sell them in markets. When the loan came through, she began building a second home so the first could become her workplace. She, too, took out a second loan after paying back the first. She and her husband still sell the crops in nearby markets, but her family's financial mainstay has become her injera bakery business. "I can provide more nutritious foods and better clothes for my kids, and now I can buy their school supplies," said the mother of five children, who range in age from 6 to 21.