Main Point: A few Jewish designers has created a quiet way to celebrate modesty and fashion
the original story appeared on i-d.vice.
Coogee Beach, Australia is one of many perfect, sun-blessed suburbs that fan out from the center of Sydney. It’s the kind of neighborhood where it’s hard to find a restaurant in which flip-flops aren’t actively encouraged. And it was a weird place to grow up as an Orthodox Jew.
Orthodox women usually dress conservatively, covering their collarbones, knees, and elbows according to the Torah’s principle of tzniut, or modesty. For sisters Chaya Chanin and Simi Polonsky, whose father was an Orthodox rabbi in Coogee Beach, that meant they had to become resourceful dressers early on.
“Imagine the West Village by the beach,” Polonsky says, of her hometown. “It was super chic and super casual. We stood out like sore thumbs. We became really good at fusing those two worlds, of modesty and beach culture.”
Longtime scavengers of all the tzniut clothing at mainstream stores like Zara and H&M, the sisters decided to take modest fashion into their own hands when they moved to New York and launched The Frock, a line of sculptural below-the-knee skirts and dresses.
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