The first-ever exclusively Jewish show that was part of New York Fashion Week brought 18 Jewish designers and more than 30 Jewish models to a downtown Manhattan runway on Thursday, organizers told JNS.
Some 400 people attended the “I Love Jewish Girls” event, held less than 24 hours before Rosh Hashanah starts on Friday night.
Alejandro Glatt, a 31-year-old Mexican-Jewish artist who uses a pseudonym and who founded and produced the event, told JNS that he intentionally chose 18 Jewish designers, given that number’s association with the Hebrew word for “life.” (VIP tickets to the event ran $180, which happens to be 10 times chai, and standard tickets cost chai plus $5.)
It was meaningful to Glatt that the show coincided with the Jewish High Holidays. “New York Fashion Week and Rosh Hashanah fall on the same dates this year,” he told JNS. “It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to start the new year in such a sweet way.”
JNS attended the event at Léman Ballroom in the financial district. A seating mix-up moved JNS from its front-row chair in VIP territory to more fitting Fashion Week territory—squeezed among photographers on a press platform at the back.
Inside the 1920s-era Léman Ballroom, towering marble columns and maritime murals depicting ships framed the runway, as models walked to upbeat Israeli electronic dance music.
Collections featured established Israeli couturiers such as Yaron Minkowski and Aviad Arik Herman, alongside emerging designers including True Tribe Tradition and Sad Girl Ranch.
Danielle Yablonka, “Miss Universe” Israel 2026, was among those to walk the runway, as were activist Zach Sage Fox and philanthropist Ari Ackerman. Before the show, Israeli singer Dudu Fisher performed “Hatikvah” and “God Bless America” to roaring applause, as shouts of Am Yisrael Chai! (“The Nation of Israel Lives”) rang throughout the ballroom.
The show, which EPN Fashion Week and Maggie Delany presented with Tobi Rubinstein’s House of Faith and Fashion, debuted during New York Fashion Week, the twice-annual spectacle that draws designers, models, celebrities and fashion-industry insiders to runway shows and events across the city.
During its September edition, designers unveil upcoming collections before the fashion calendar moves on to London, Milan and Paris.
Glatt told JNS that the title of the fashion show was inspired by his desire to celebrate “joyful Jewish art,” something he felt compelled to do after experiencing rising Jew-hatred firsthand.
“As a Jewish artist, for the last five years, I’ve been showing my Jewish pride, and as a Mexican artist being openly Jewish, I had my biggest art installation destroyed by protesters during Art Week in Mexico City,” he told JNS.
“I constantly get hate on social media and even death threats,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why I moved to the United States from Mexico.”
“I get many attacks just by sharing that I love Jewish girls, which is not even a Zionist message,” he told JNS. “Of course, I am a big Zionist and love and support Israel, but just the fact that we’re speaking here about being Jewish, when someone attacks you online, you cannot even make the excuse that that is anti-Zionism and not antisemitism.”
By naming an event “I Love Jewish Girls,” he is “not speaking about Israel,” Glatt told JNS. “We are just speaking about our culture.”
Producing a fashion show may seem like a departure for an artist, Glatt told JNS, but he sees art and fashion as two forms of the same medium.
“I’m a multidisciplinary artist. I do everything from murals to sculptures to jewelry,” he said. “Everything is an expression, and everything can be made to give a message to the world.”
“I am presenting my own collection of clothes which will have my drawings printed on denim jackets,” he told JNS. “There is no separation between art and fashion, because it’s all something I created with my own hands.”
‘Not just a Broadway musical’
Rubinstein, 68, the event co-host, is a rabbi who has worked in the fashion industry for more than 45 years. She told JNS that her background bridges the religious and fashion worlds at the heart of the show.
“People think that there is no relationship between fashion and Judaism, because fashion is viewed as something vain, vapid, self-centered and materialistic,” she said. “But fashion can be godlike and spiritual.”
“There’s a reason why there are chapters in the Torah dedicated to the high priest’s outfit, complete with descriptions about every single detail of the embroidery, the color, the trim and the measurements. Everything,” she said.
“It’s because what you wear is a reflection of who you are,” she told JNS. “I mean we can go all the way back to Joseph’s colorful coat in the Bible; these are real stories, not just a Broadway musical.”
Rubinstein told JNS that a specifically Jewish fashion event like this would not have been necessary before Oct. 7 and the subsequent rise in Jew-hatred.
“What’s happening with antisemitism is not under the carpet. It’s not something fictional, but real and happening within the fashion world as well,” she said. “Fashion has not been excluded from antisemitism.”
There has been a “rude awakening” for Jews in the fashion industry after Oct. 7, and they have discovered “exactly who is for them and who is not,” according to Rubinstein.
“I have done faith and fashion event panels and shows with Muslims, Christians and Jews, but after everything that happened, the Muslim part of it became a problem, because it was hostile,” she told JNS.
“We collectively are so excited about this event, because we are not screaming propaganda in the streets,” she said. “We are walking the runway to remind the world that Judaism and fashion are completely interwoven from the streets of Seventh Avenue in New York City to the streets of Tel Aviv.”
The fashion show was a significant undertaking that took about five months to coordinate, according to Rubinstein.
“A fashion show is a combination of a Broadway show, a trunk show, a therapist’s couch, a babysitting service and a logistics wonderland,” she told JNS. “The main two things are the front of the house, which is the audience and all those details. And then there’s the back of the house, which means the models, the modeling teams, the makeup teams, the beauty teams, the dressers and the volunteers.”
“It is a tremendous production,” she said. “You’re dealing with highly creative people and managing all their feelings as well.”
