CHICAGO: Palestinian Yara Alul left the comfort of a promising career as a stock trader, and later as a program manager at Amazon, to launch along with her sisters their own company showcasing their culture and strengthening the Palestinian clothing industry.
Alul said Urban Pal, which was launched in July, takes cultural iconic designs in clothing accessories and uses Palestinian seamstresses to create products that are sold on www.urbanpal.co.
It also solicits design ideas and drawings from Palestinian children and places them on clothing for distribution, with portions of the profits going to the civic organization Taawon.
“Urban Pal aims to sustainably preserve and evolve Palestinian heritage while offering a 2025 customer experience,” Alul told Arab News.
“We aim to sustainably source all of our items and focus on using vintage, organic and recycled fabric where we can … We try to bring Palestine where we can by hiring Palestinian, sourcing from Palestine, and adding cultural icons to all of our pieces,” she said.
“The idea is to integrate it into everyone’s everyday wear, to strike conversations about Palestinian culture and heritage, because it’s so beautiful and it needs to be preserved and evolved.”
Customers can customize products with their own design ideas, and shipping and returns are free.
A graduate of Penn State University now living in Dubai, Alul said her and her sisters Meera and Tala “were always raised to aim to succeed in order to give back to our community.”
Beyond fashion, Alul said, the Urban Pal brand stands as a social movement, aiming to preserve cultural identity while uplifting artisans and inspiring future entrepreneurs to align purpose with business.
“We work with multiple children in Gaza right now to buy artwork from them. Sometimes we request specific themes, other times they just share their drawings with us and we buy them from them. We currently work with a dozen seamstresses in Jordan, but we’re looking to expand elsewhere,” she added.
“All of them use the funds to support their families, and have expressed the mental and emotional impact it’s had on them.”
