It also hints at Nessa’s conscious use of clothing as shield and profound impact on her choice of self presentation. This tragic event radically affects her personal and professional life. The flashback also discloses a crucial secret in Nessa’s life: her kidnapping during her first visit to Gaza. For the occasion she wears a long, black dress with lace details, a sombre, safe choice which reveals that her fashionable armour has not yet been perfected. In episode four, a flashback shows Nessa give a speech at the Stein Foundation’s university in the West Bank, her first time in Gaza as official representative of her company. While it is hardly a surprise that designer dresses clothing matter in an upper-class London setting, Nessa’s armour follows her on her official trips to the Middle East. As journalist Sarah Chalmers observed, ‘everything about Nessa Stein’s demeanour screamed player, before she had even uttered a word.’ 3 Nessa Stein at the press conference in Gaza. Her style consciously bends the codes of power dressing and, in doing so, lets the audience know that she is perfectly aware of, and ready to challenge, the rules of power play. According to Gibbon, ‘the untraditional dress choice was … a way to turn the idea of power dressing on its head.’ 2 Nessa’s fashionability sets her apart from the traditional establishment she is now a part of and, rather than being perceived as inappropriate or garish, lends her confidence and an enviable presence. Whereas most political female figures seem to embrace Margaret Thatcher’s sartorial mantra ‘never flashy, just appropriate,’ Nessa’s outfit of choice for her public appearances is always a designer dress. The scene provides the blueprint for Nessa’s confident public persona and wardrobe. At the party that follows the ceremony, she wears a Roland Mouret leopard print dress while giving a speech on a podium, her body language confident and relaxed, slightly provoking. The Honourable Woman opens with Nessa’s ceremony of ennoblement in the House of Lords, where she is given the title of Baroness due to her commitment for the Middle East peace process. During the unravelling of the main plot of The Honourable Woman, which centres around the Stein Group’s attempt to build optical fibre cables in the West Bank, viewers also witness the peeling off of Nessa’s layers of identity. Gibbon spoke of Nessa’s clothes are ‘a protection layer.’ 1 Like the opening monologue suggests, there is more that lies behind her sophisticated armour in fact, Nessa Stein is ‘not quite the woman she appears to be’ as Hugh Hayden-Hoyle, the head of MI6’s Middle East desk, observes in episode six. As the public face of the Stein Group and a politically outspoken entrepreneur, Nessa carefully crafts her appearance. In order to make up for their father’s Zionist beliefs and arms dealing, which led to his murder in the presence of young Nessa and Ephra, both have engaged in extensive philanthropic work to facilitate the reconciliation process between Israel and Palestine. The voice belongs to the protagonist of the series, Vanessa (Nessa) Stein, an Anglo-Israeli businesswoman who, together with her brother Ephra, has inherited her father’s company. So when you think about it like that, it’s a wonder that we trust anyone at all. But mostly we tell lies, we hide our secrets from each other, from ourselves. But sometimes, rarely, something can happen that leaves you no choice but to reveal it. We all tell lies, just to keep them from each other and from ourselves. Who do you trust? How do you know? By how they appear or what they say? What they do? How? We all have secrets. Similarly, the voice-over for the opening monologue of The Honourable Woman, the 2014 BBC miniseries starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, recites: The devouring of the onion goes hand in hand with the urge to destroy the many layers of cultural and social identity she is made of. IN 1996 PERFORMANCE ARTIST Marina Abramović created The Onion, a video installation in which she eats an onion while her own voice-over repeats, among other things, ‘I want to understand and see clearly what is behind all of us.’ As she bites into the onion she smears her lipstick, a symbolic coming undone of her identity. Nessa on stage in her Roland Mouret dress.
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