BY HILARY DANAILOVA
ore and more Philadelphia brides
are importing their beshert — from
Israel. But they’re not trolling Israeli dating web-
sites or joining Holy Land singles tours. The
yentas are Instagram and Pinterest — and the
intendeds are one-of-a-kind wedding gowns,
handmade in Tel Aviv.

Out of the atéliers of Israel’s fashion capital
comes a parade of bridal looks that draw gasps:
plunging necklines, bare midriffs, second-skin
silhouettes and sheer-illusion fabric that sug-
gests entirely bare backs … and more. Fash-
ion-forward women are falling hard for these
gowns by Inbal Dror, Berta, Zahavit Tshuba,
Mira Zwillinger and Flora; long-married Be-
yoncé even wore an Inbal Dror wedding dress
to the 2016 Grammys. Bride after bride de-
scribes finding her dress in language more
commonly used for romance novels.

“I just knew the second I put it on,” gushed
Simona Levithan, a 27-year-old nurse who
wore Berta to her April nuptials at the Atrium
at Curtis Center. “I knew, ‘This is the one.’ ”
Another newlywed, Marisa Awad, 29, said she
knew her dress was “the one” when she spied
it on the rack at The Wedding Shoppe in
Wayne, buying the sample then and there.

And Bilon Geiger, a 33-year-old Berta bride
who was married in November at the Fair-
mount Park Horticulture Center, found her
beshert while surfing around Pinterest and
never looked back: “I was in love. I was like,
‘Yes, this is the one.’ ”
That degree of ardor is what inspired Kathy
Hart Bado, a longtime wedding planner with
“zero intention of selling dresses, ever,” to
spontaneously open a shop … selling Israeli
dresses. After being introduced to the Berta
line by her daughter, Hart Bado went to a trade
show in New York and came back smitten.

“They were so gorgeous, so different from
anything I’d ever seen,” recalled Hart Bado. “I
looked at my sister and said, ‘This is what we
A Berta gown




have to do.’ ” Two years ago, Hart Bado and her sister and business
partner, Stacey Veeraraj, opened The Wedding Factor in Center City,
a boutique that carries exclusively Berta gowns — the designer’s only
Philadelphia-area outlet.

So what is it about these Israeli confections of lace and tulle that
inspires the kind of love-at-first-sight, coup de foudre passion usually
reserved for … ahem … the groom himself?
The same qualities women look for in that groom, according to
bridal wear experts: sex appeal, high finance and attractiveness. The
new Tel Aviv couture is strikingly sexier than traditional bridal wear:
Ethereal lace, sparkling embellishments and appliqués captivate the
eye in a way that satin does not. This bespoke detail translates into
very costly gowns, with price tags in the high four and five digits.

The new Israeli lines “are all really very striking in different ways,”
said Carrie Denny Whitcraft, the editor of Philadelphia Wedding
magazine, who was married last New Year’s Eve in an Inbal Dror
she fell in love with during a photo shoot. “With these designers,
every single dress, you’re like, ‘Ooh, look at that sleeve! Ooh, look
at that embellishment! Ooh, look at that back!’ ” — a departure, she
said, from the usual lineup of refined homogeneity.

“The Israeli designers are very, very high-end, very sexy, very
couture,” noted Pattie Lamantia, owner of The Wedding Shoppe
in Wayne, the only local outlet for both Inbal Dror and Flora. “All-
A Bilon Johnson gown
nude linings, very sexy low backs. Even when they’re in long
sleeves, they’re slit up the thigh.”
Which brings up another intriguing element of the Tel Aviv look:
These gowns cover a lot of skin, yet reveal the body to a far greater
degree than the flowing, romantic looks favored by U.S. designers.

Long sleeves are common; so are long skirts, prompting many ob-
servers to parse the influence of traditional Jewish modesty. There
is more than a little irony inherent in a white wedding dress that
covers the elbows yet bares the navel, draping demurely over the
ankles yet hugging the derrière.

In short, they’re a tease — sometimes literally, as when a line of
buttons appears to climb up a bare back that, on closer inspection,
is covered by a sheer nude netting. Illusion is essential to the Tel
Aviv aesthetic, achieved through diaphanous fabrics and appliquéd
flowers and jewels that appear to float alongside the bride.

It was a look that intoxicated Allie Wildstein, a 25-year-old social
media and marketing manager who chose a Berta gown for her up-
coming wedding at The Bellevue. Berta “strikes a balance — even
though her dresses are heavily embroidered or embellished, the sil-
houettes are clean and fitted so that the dresses are ornate, but still
very modern and chic,” Wildstein said.

The bride who wears Israeli is knowledgeable about fashion and
financially able to make her couture dream a reality, said Denny
Carrie Denny Whitcraft in her gown from Inbal Dror
See Dress, Page 20
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM SIMCHAS
MARCH 31, 2016
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