How to Wear a Keffiyeh: Women's Guide to Palestinian Tradition

TL;DR: The keffiyeh began as a man's headdress, a square of cotton Bedouin men wore against the desert sun, and its black-and-white Palestinian form is barely seventy years old. This guide covers how to wear a keffiyeh, women's style, without the agal cord the men's fold depends on: draped as a shawl, knotted loosely at the neck, or pinned at one shoulder. The keffiyeh (الكوفية, al-kufiyya in Arabic) is still handwoven on exactly one factory floor left in Palestine. Almost everything else sold under the name now comes from somewhere else.

A square of checkered cotton folded once on the diagonal and set loosely on the head. That is the entire construction of a keffiyeh, and it has not changed in a hundred years. What has changed is who wears it, and how. FALASTIN's own line of heritage-rooted apparel sits in that same territory: garments that carry real meaning rather than a borrowed print.

What is the keffiyeh, and who wore it first?

In Arabic, الكوفية, al-kufiyya, names the headscarf long before it named a national symbol. Bedouin men across the region wore some version of it for a plain practical reason: a folded cotton square, held with a cord called an agal, kept sun and dust off the neck and face. There was nothing political in that. It was desert clothing.

Palestine's own version carried a class line long before it carried a national one. Village farmers wore the plain white keffiyeh with its agal. City dwellers and the educated elite wore the Ottoman tarbush, the red felt cap known elsewhere as the fez. The two headwear styles marked two different lives.

How a men's headscarf became a Palestinian symbol

That class line is what the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939 erased, and it erased it on purpose. Rebel commanders ordered Palestinians, farmer and city professional alike, to wear the keffiyeh, so that a man in a tarbush could no longer be told apart from a man in a headscarf. In 1938, the British High Commissioner Harold MacMichael reported that the order had been obeyed with what he called "surprising docility."

Most people went back to the tarbush, or to no headwear at all, once the Revolt ended. The black-and-white checkered pattern specifically, the one anyone today pictures at the word keffiyeh, is newer still. It traces to the 1950s, when the British officer John Bagot Glubb, commanding Jordan's Arab Legion, put his Palestinian units in black-and-white to set them apart from his red-and-white Jordanian forces.

The pattern's hold on the Palestinian cause grew through the 1960s, carried by a resistance movement for whom it became a visual shorthand recognized far outside the region.

How to Wear a Keffiyeh: Women's Everyday Styles

Nothing about the keffiyeh's weave or pattern asks to be worn by one gender. Its folded-square shape works as a shawl across the shoulders, knotted loosely once at the front of the neck, or draped over the hair and let fall on either side, closer to how a long scarf sits than how the agal-and-fold method holds it on a man. Pinned at one shoulder with the rest left loose is another common way it is worn now, less structured than the traditional men's wrap, which is the point. It is adapted, not copied.

None of these are rules the way the traditional fold is a rule. A keffiyeh worn by a woman today, in Ramallah or in the diaspora, is closer to how any large scarf gets worn, draped, knotted, pinned, than to a fixed technique passed down with instructions. That looseness is itself the modern part of the story: a garment that once signaled exactly which group a man belonged to now reads, worn by a woman, simply as Palestinian.

The one factory left, and what is disappearing with it

Almost every keffiyeh sold today, including the novelty colour prints hanging next to the traditional black-and-white in market stalls, is made somewhere other than Palestine. The Hirbawi factory in Hebron is the last one making it there. Hajj Yasser Hirbawi started the business in 1961, after years importing keffiyehs from Syria, with two looms shipped in from Japan.

Today his sons Izzat, Abdullah, and Jouda, who grew up working the factory floor as children, run twenty looms and more than 300 colour variations, expanded deliberately to hold the attention of younger buyers. That is one factory, competing against markets at home and abroad flooded with cheaper keffiyehs woven elsewhere from thinner cotton.

Closures between West Bank cities and the absence of a Palestinian airport or seaport have kept the Hirbawis from meeting demand that rose sharply even as their ability to ship it did not. A hand-loomed keffiyeh from the one workshop still weaving it in Palestine is not the same object as a printed import, whatever the price tag says.

Wearing it well

A keffiyeh carries real weight for the people whose history it comes from, which is reason enough to wear it with some care rather than as a passing print. For the specific etiquette of doing that respectfully, FALASTIN has covered it at length in a guide to wearing Palestinian heritage respectfully, and the traditional men's fold is laid out step by step in a men's guide to the Palestinian tradition, alongside six ways to wear it rooted in Palestinian tradition that cover both.

FALASTIN's own pieces carry that same approach: designed to be worn anywhere, and to speak clearly to anyone who already knows what they are looking at.

Frequently asked questions

Is it disrespectful for a woman to wear a keffiyeh?
No. The keffiyeh carries no gender rule, and Palestinian women wear it openly today, both at home and across the diaspora. What matters is wearing it as the Palestinian garment it is, not as a costume print detached from where it comes from.

How is a keffiyeh worn as a scarf different from the traditional fold?
The traditional men's method folds the square on the diagonal and holds it in place with an agal cord around the crown of the head. A scarf-style wear skips the agal entirely: the square is draped, knotted at the neck, or pinned at one shoulder, closer to how any long scarf is worn.

Where does the black-and-white keffiyeh pattern come from?
It dates to the 1950s, when the British officer John Bagot Glubb put his Palestinian units in Jordan's Arab Legion in black-and-white to set them apart from his red-and-white Jordanian soldiers. The pattern became fixed to the Palestinian cause through the 1960s.

Is every keffiyeh sold today made in Palestine?
No. The Hirbawi factory in Hebron is the only remaining manufacturer inside Palestine, running twenty looms. Most keffiyehs on the market, including many sold as traditional, are produced elsewhere at a lower cost.

At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Palestinian clothing collection.

100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.