Tel Aviv’s Fashion Week returns, with former hostage and disabled veterans on runway
Annual event includes released captive Omer Shem Tov and ‘Fragments,’ a collection designed for injured soldiers
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Former hostage Omer Shem Tov danced and clapped down the runway at Israel Canada Fashion Week Tel Aviv, with his mother Shelly Shem Tov grinning at him from the front row.
Shem Tov took part in the “TimeLess Icons” show, a charity fashion event in partnership with food brand Elite, designed around iconic confections familiar to generations of Israelis.
The fashion event, held from November 9 to 12, returned for a second year following a wartime hiatus.
The 2025 Fashion Week included former hostage Eli Sharabi walking the runway, as well as hostage family members such as Gaya Calderon, whose brothers and father survived captivity; Keren Schem, the mother of former hostage Mia Schem; Dani Miran, the father of released hostage Omri Miran; and Ayelet Samerano, whose son Yonatan was killed during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and whose body was recovered by the IDF in Gaza in June 2025.
Other reminders of three years of war included designer Golan Elbaz Frydman’s show on Wednesday afternoon in collaboration with the IDF Disabled Veterans Organization.
Elbaz Frydman had already been working on a collection he called “Fragments” when Motty Reif, the longtime producer of Fashion Week, contacted him about showing his apparel on the runway.
A beautiful moment in Tel Aviv this week as former hostage Omer Shem Tov walks the runway at Israel Canada Fashion Week.
Omer was abducted by Hamas terrorists from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and released after 505 days in captivity.
Watching him reclaim his… pic.twitter.com/7aToJy1hho
— Creative Community for Peace (@CCFPeace) November 10, 2026
The designer showed his collection with injured veterans walking the runway on prosthetics, or pushing themselves in wheelchairs, wearing clothing items meant to accommodate their life-altering injuries.
“The whole concept is to gather the fragments of yourself and rebuild anew,” said Elbaz Frydman in an Instagram reel. “You’ll never be what you were, but you’re a new version of yourself, and you’re no less than what you were.”
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