Apparel Founder Field Guide to Tel Aviv 2026

Why Tel Aviv Is Worth Your Attention Right Now

Most apparel founders think of Tel Aviv as a tech hub. And they're right. But what gets lost in the startup noise is how much of that technology DNA is bleeding into fashion. This is a city where brand operators, software engineers, and industrial designers actually talk to each other. That's rarer than it sounds.

Tel Aviv is fast growing into a hub of style and design with Israeli designers like Alon Livné, Nili Lotan, and Alber Elbaz taking over some of the world's most important fashion stages. Alon Livné, winner of the first season of Israeli Project Runway, has built a ready-to-wear collection with a following that includes Naomi Campbell, Kim Kardashian, and Paris Hilton.

When I started looking at Tel Aviv for Ohzehn, I expected to find interesting fabric tech and maybe some aggressive pricing. What I found instead was a city punching above its weight in brand-building infrastructure. Not manufacturing scale. Not cheap CMT. But something harder to replicate: a concentration of people who understand both product and distribution.

The Shenkar Factor

You can't talk about Tel Aviv apparel without talking about Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. Located in Ramat Gan in the Tel Aviv District, Shenkar serves Israeli industry by providing academic qualification and R&D services. It's considered the top design school in Israel.

The Department of Fashion Design at Shenkar is one of the most respected in the fashion world. Every year, its graduates enter jobs and internships with the world's top designers, participate in prestigious exhibitions, and win internationally recognized awards.

What makes Shenkar different from typical fashion schools? The college combines engineering, design, and art under one roof, allowing for a multidisciplinary approach to education. This integration fosters collaboration between students and professionals from different fields, enhancing innovation and creativity.

The school was ranked by Business of Fashion in the top 20 of "the 50 Leading Schools in the Fashion World" and was listed by Forbes in 2021 as one of its ten most innovative fashion departments. Shenkar was founded in 1970 as the "College for Fashion and Textile Technology" and has since formed many world-renowned designers such as Alber Elbaz, Lanvin's artistic director from 2001 to 2015.

For apparel founders, this matters. Shenkar graduates understand construction. They understand textiles at a technical level. And many of them have been exposed to both the commercial realities of fashion and the engineering mindset that drives cost optimization. That's the talent pool you're tapping when you build a team in Tel Aviv.

Fashion Tech Concentration

Tel Aviv's startup density creates interesting spillover effects for apparel. Metropolitan Tel Aviv holds the world's highest density of startups, with about 800 early-stage startups and more than 20 percent of Israel's total, along with about 1,000 hi-tech companies employing around 39,000 people.

According to a publicist who regularly works with the start-up community in Tel Aviv, there are about 40 fashion-centric tech start-ups on the scene, with more retail and style-focused companies popping up every year.

I noticed three things about the fashion-tech scene here that differentiate it from what you'd find in LA or New York:

1. Virtual Try-On Technology

Zeekit combines fashion and technology by developing a virtual fitting room. It allows customers to see themselves dressed in any item of clothing before they physically try it on. The company uses AI and augmented reality to help customers with their purchasing decisions.

Zeekit, a virtual fitting app for online shoppers founded in 2013, raised $9 million in 2016. This is the kind of technology that, five years ago, was a gimmick. Now it's becoming table stakes for DTC brands trying to reduce returns.

2. Visual Search and Discovery

Syte, founded in 2015, has spent years perfecting their accuracy in visual intelligence. The company now holds the leading visual search technology that automatically transforms images into shoppable content.

Donde Fashion provides a platform that helps users find exact outfits by searching according to visual features over thousands of brands. Its search engine uses AI to "think like a shopper" to display the results users have in mind.

3. Digital Printing and On-Demand Production

Israel, a world-renowned high-tech developer, applies its know-how to the fast-paced world of fashion and textiles. As a result, the label "Made in Israel" has come to represent design innovation and ingenuity, as well as technological advancements.

Kornit Digital, based in Israel, has become a major player in digital printing technology for apparel. Kornit Digital enables the mass customization of printed textile products by developing, manufacturing, and marketing digital printing technologies. The company gained international attention from its collaboration with Project Runway.

This concentration of fashion-tech companies means that if you're building an apparel brand in Tel Aviv, you have access to partnerships and pilot programs that founders in other cities simply don't.

The Swimwear Heritage

Israel has an underappreciated history in swimwear that dates back decades. Today, Israeli manufacturers of intimate garments, swimwear, fashion clothing, home textiles, and high-performance threads are among the world's best. Israeli swimwear is one of the country's earliest worldwide fashion exports.

The majority of Israeli swimwear is sold in luxury department stores throughout the United States and Europe.

The story of Lea and Armin Gottlieb, founders of the world-famous swimsuit manufacturers Gottex Models Ltd, illustrates the flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit of Israel's textile industry.

For founders building in swim, resort, or activewear categories, this heritage matters. It means there's institutional knowledge in the region about fit, fabrication, and the specific technical challenges of performance swimwear. Chlorine resistance, color fastness, recovery after stretch. These aren't problems Tel Aviv manufacturers are encountering for the first time.

The Free Trade Advantage

One thing that surprised me about Israel's apparel industry: the trade agreements. Israel is the only country in the world that has free trade agreements with both the U.S. and the EU, making it a bridge between the continents. By virtue of NAFTA, Israel also enjoys duty-free access to Canada and Mexico. This agreement, together with the Israel-Mexico FTA, allows Israel duty-free access to practically all of North America.

For U.S. brand operators, this creates interesting sourcing possibilities. The industry has adopted high tech manufacturing methods to produce quality and cost-competitive goods, made strategic acquisitions in overseas companies and focused on niche markets where medium-sized and small companies can be major players.

Challenges include competition from lower-cost manufacturing countries and the need for constant innovation to stay relevant. Opportunities exist in niche markets, such as high-performance fabrics and medical textiles, which take advantage of Israel's strong research and development capabilities.

The Local Brand Scene

Walking through Tel Aviv, I was struck by the number of small, independent apparel brands with actual point of view. Not copycats of what's selling in LA. Actual creative direction.

KitePride is one brand well worth knowing. Launched in 2017, KitePride is a nonprofit-owned fashion label that makes bold, one-of-a-kind bags from upcycled materials, including retired sails, parachutes, and kites, giving new life to materials that would otherwise go to waste.

Dorin Frankfurt is one of Israel's leading fashion designers who has been making women's apparel since 1983. Operating in the heart of Tel Aviv with both factory and stores based there, she produces limited edition designer clothes at affordable prices. Working with Margit Segal, Frankfurt insists that the operation remains in Israel and has resisted attempts to have work outsourced to the Far East.

Tooshaya creates eco-friendly clothing and accessories exclusively from natural fibers, including bamboo, soy, cotton, and wool. The Tel Aviv-based brand has built its identity around sustainability, ethical production, and locally made design.

"People here are used to risks; they have a way of enjoying life that's different than I experienced in Europe. Each day you could potentially die, so every day must be a big party and you can't be shy." That's how Yael Chojnowski, co-founder of body-scanning startup Nettelo, described the Tel Aviv mindset when she moved from Paris to build her business.

The Manufacturing Reality

Let me be direct: Tel Aviv is not a manufacturing hub. Israel does have a textile and clothing manufacturing industry, although it is not as large as some other countries. Israeli clothing manufacturers primarily focus on specialized and high-quality products, including fashion apparel and textiles.

The leading textile and apparel companies in Israel by revenue as of January 2026 include Delta Galil Industries with $1.9B in revenue, followed by Avgol with $413.3M and TEFRON with $243.5M.

Companies competing with low-cost Far Eastern products have responded by shifting labor-intensive manufacturing to low-labor-cost countries, finding and developing niche markets where they can have a relative advantage, and employing the latest automated methods for design and manufacture.

So if you're looking for cheap cut-make-trim, Tel Aviv isn't it. But if you're looking for:

• Technical expertise in swimwear and intimates
• Access to fashion-tech partnerships
• Design talent with engineering backgrounds
• A beta-testing market with sophisticated consumers

Then Tel Aviv belongs on your map.

Explore the Tel Aviv Scene

We just launched our Tel Aviv city page to help apparel founders understand what this market offers. It covers sourcing contacts, local brands to study, and the fashion-tech companies worth knowing.

The Practical Takeaway

If you're an apparel founder considering Tel Aviv, here's my advice: don't come looking for factories. Come looking for people. The value of this city is in the talent. Designers who understand engineering. Engineers who understand commerce. Brand operators who've built in constrained markets and know how to ship product without infinite runway.

The founders I met in Tel Aviv weren't precious about their brands. They were practical. They shipped. And they understood that building a fashion company in a small domestic market means you have to think global from day one.

That mindset is worth learning from.

Dougie Taylor

Co-Founder, Ohzehn Textiles · Forbes & Inc. recognized brand operator