For Shulamith Dubno Neiman, every special occasion called for a new dress — but not just any dress.
She started her collection as a teenager in the 1940s, living in British Mandate Palestine. Preparing for her first piano recital, the 16-year-old daughter of Polish Jews gravitated toward an unlikely outfit: a traditional Yemeni dress, embellished with yellow and red embroidery.
That dress was the first of over 20 pieces Shulamith commissioned from local Yemeni and Arab embroiderers throughout her life, even after she moved to the United States in 1949 and raised a family there.
Earlier this year, the dresses returned to their native Israel, where they will be given a second life as historical and cultural artifacts at the Rose Fashion and Textile Archive at the Shenkar College of Art and Design in Ramat Gan.
“I just felt like these are important, and I want to give them some place where they’re going to be taken care of and appreciated,” Kensington resident Rina Neiman, one of Shulamith’s three daughters, told J. “Bringing them to Israel was really important, because that’s where they came from, and that’s where she came from.”
Following Shulamith’s death in 1975, the dresses remained largely untouched, apart from getting handed down to Rina in 2004.
Shulamith was a true sabra: Born in Tel Aviv in 1928 and a young adult at the time of Israel’s founding, she was influenced by the cultures of the diverse communities she grew up around.
Fascinated by her mother’s story, Rina conducted extensive research on the first 20 years of Shulamith’s life that culminated in “Born Under Fire,” a partially fictionalized historical novel published in 2018.
Shulamith’s taste in clothes was an extension of her identity.
“They’re statement pieces,” said Rina, who has lived in the Bay Area since the 1980s. “Other mothers wore little black dresses, my mother wore one that was covered with silver embroidery. This was her dress-up clothing, and especially if she was representing Israel.”
After Shulamith moved to New York in 1950 to study at the Manhattan School of Music, she also began working at that city’s first Israeli consulate. She continued to perform, primarily singing and playing guitar, at concerts featuring music from both Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
The dresses accompanied Shulamith throughout her career and public appearances. One Passover seder she and her husband, Rabbi David Neiman, led in Rome in 1971 particularly stands out in Rina’s memory.
That spring, while David taught Jewish Theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, the family traveled to Israel, and Shulamith placed another order. But this time for pantsuits, and not just for herself.
By the time of the seder, four pantsuits arrived in the mail from Jerusalem: three matching red sets with silver embroidery for the girls, and one black one for Shulamith, adorned with gold embroidery. She also brought her guitar along, and performed variations of traditional Passover songs from Jewish communities around the world.
“She was definitely a performer,” Rina said. “I think those dresses reflected that. They were dramatic, they were definitely different, they were unique.”
That pantsuit stood on display in Rina’s living room from 2021 until she donated it to Shenkar College this year along with 17 other pieces.
Finding a new home for the dresses did not take much searching, thanks to Rina’s sister, Rachel, head of international public relations at the National Library of Israel, who suggested Shenkar’s Rose Archive.
In February, Rina arrived in Israel with a giant duffel bag filled with Shulamith’s dresses, shirts and pantsuits that were approved for donation, which she, Rachel and their third sister Becky hand-delivered to the Ramat Gan facility.
When any piece of clothing is donated to the archive, it undergoes a process for both physical and historical preservation, according to curator Shaked Arkin.
“We examine the historical and social context of each object, and consider it in relation to other items in our holdings, as well as in other archives and museum collections,” Arkin wrote in an email to J. “This allows us to better understand techniques, makers and the broader cultural narratives embedded within the garments.”
Understanding the cultural identity of a piece hinges on the donor’s familiarity with the original owner’s identity, Arkin said. In the case of Shulamith’s collection, the meticulous work the Neiman daughters put in to preserve her memory served as a historical goldmine for the Rose Archive.
“In many cases, the identity of the wearer remains unknown. In this regard, the Shulamith Neiman collection is particularly significant,” according to Arkin. “It is accompanied by extensive information about the wearer, as well as photographic documentation, allowing us to date the garments with a high degree of accuracy.”
The Rose Archive, which primarily acts as a research center for students at Shenkar College, is accessible to visitors for a fee. Parts of the archive have also been digitized on its website.