There are moments in life when the smallest desire suddenly begins to carry much more emotional weight than it was ever meant to.
A dress is no longer just a dress.
A photoshoot is no longer just a photoshoot.
A package is no longer just a package.
In ordinary times, these things would have stayed small.
Pretty.
Exciting.
A little indulgent, maybe.
But still small.
And yet in the middle of war, when life begins shrinking itself around fear, uncertainty, alarms, and survival, even the softest wish can start to feel enormous.
That is what happened to me with this photoshoot.
By the third week of the war with Iran, joy felt almost inappropriate. Not impossible exactly, because people do still laugh and talk and drink coffee and answer emails and live somehow, but fragile. As if every happy thought had to fight for its place in the room.
And still, something in me wanted to reach for beauty.
I wanted something to look forward to.
Something that belonged to me.
Something soft and exciting and creative that would briefly pull my mind away from missiles, updates, uncertainty, and the exhausting emotional weather of living through war.
So I booked a photoshoot.
Wanting Something Beautiful Anyway
Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while already knows this about me:
I love photoshoots.
Not just because I like dressing up.
Not just because I like the final pictures.
But because photoshoots do something deeper to me.
They let me step into beauty with intention.
They turn emotion into image.
Mood into fabric.
Longing into posture, light, color, movement.
For a few hours, everything becomes art-directed.
And when life outside feels chaotic, there is something almost healing about that.
It had been a while since my last shoot, and I had been missing it quietly for some time. Then Yasya, my favorite photographer, posted that she was still doing photoshoots even during the war. Outdoor ones. Soft, natural, beautiful ones.
The second I saw her post, something in me lit up.
She mentioned that this was the perfect season for it. That the flowers were blooming. That she knew the most beautiful location in the woods, full of exactly the kind of natural softness that feels cinematic without trying too hard.
And almost at the same moment, House of CB released their newest collection.
Pastel colors.
Lace.
Spring lightness.
That romantic softness they do so well, where every dress looks like it belongs in a scene instead of a store.
One dress caught my eye immediately.
It was butter yellow.
The softest kind.
Creamy. Sunlit. Almost like the color of warmth itself.
It had structure at the top, the kind that gently holds the body in place and makes the waist feel intentional. The straps were delicate. The neckline was clean and romantic. And then the skirt opened into lace at the bottom, airy and feminine and soft in exactly the way I love.
In the campaign photos, the models were standing outside in the woods, carrying baskets filled with flowers and books. Everything about it felt dreamy and literary and spring-like. The kind of softness that doesn’t apologize for itself.
I looked at those photos and immediately knew:
I want this.
Not only the dress.
The whole feeling.
The woods.
The flowers.
The softness.
The quiet romance of it.
It felt like the opposite of war.
And maybe that was exactly why I wanted it so badly.
The First Obstacle — Closed Skies
Then reality entered the picture.
Because of the war, the airspace was closed.
No planes in.
No planes out.
No tourists.
No regular shipping.
No easy solutions.
The moment I understood that, I also understood something else:
If I wanted this dress, I would have to become creative.
Very creative.
And once I decide I want something emotionally, I don’t give up easily.
So I started thinking.
What if I send it to someone abroad first?
My first idea was my best friend Katy, who was in Serbia. I asked her if it might be possible to send the package to her address and then have her send it on to me through FedEx.
She agreed immediately.
Of course she did.
That is the kind of friend she is.
We were already building the plan in our heads. She even told me she’d get a local SIM card so the courier could reach her properly once the package arrived.
For a brief moment, it all felt possible.
Then I went to the website and discovered they don’t ship to Serbia.
I remember staring at the country list in disbelief, searching for it more than once, as if maybe I had just missed it the first time.
But no.
Serbia simply wasn’t there.
That plan collapsed before it even began.
Plan B — Asking the Brand to Help
So I moved to the next idea.
If they couldn’t ship through their regular method, maybe they could make a one-time exception. Maybe I could pay for a different courier. Maybe they could let FedEx collect directly from the store. I was willing to cover every extra expense myself.
At that point, I wasn’t even asking for convenience.
I was asking for cooperation.
So I wrote to them.
Explained the urgency.
Explained the war.
Explained the photoshoot.
Explained that I was willing to arrange everything myself.
They refused.
Politely, of course.
But still — refused.
I read the email and felt that very particular kind of frustration that comes when you know something could be possible if people simply chose to be a little flexible.
And maybe that is what made it sting more.
Not that the situation was impossible.
But that it was only impossible because no one wanted to help make it possible.
Still, I didn’t give up.
Calling the Couriers Myself
At that point I decided that if the store wouldn’t offer a solution, I would go around them and find one myself.
So I started contacting courier companies directly.
FedEx.
UPS.
DHL.
There had to be a way.
I had already scheduled the photoshoot for the end of the month, and I didn’t want to move it. Not after Yasya told me this was the perfect moment. Not after I had already begun emotionally living inside those imagined pictures.
And then, finally, I received a message that made me feel hopeful again.
FedEx wrote back and said that yes — a door-to-door international express shipment from London to Tel Aviv was possible. Even direct collection from the House of CB retail store in London, as long as the store was willing to prepare the item and release it to the courier.
I cannot even explain how relieved I felt reading that.
It felt like I had found the answer.
A real one.
A practical one.
A hopeful one.
I wrote back to the store immediately, explaining everything in detail. All they needed to do was prepare the dress for pickup. FedEx would handle the rest. I would arrange and pay for everything.
This time, I really believed it would work.
And then came the second refusal.
Again.
And this one hurt more.
Because this time I had done the impossible part already. I had found the route. I had found the courier. I had solved the problem they said could not be solved.
All they had to do was say yes.
And they still said no.
Honestly, I was devastated.
Not only because of the dress.
But because by then the dress had already become tied to something larger in my mind.
To hope.
To beauty.
To the stubborn little decision to create something lovely for myself in a season that did not feel lovely at all.
And when that also seemed blocked, it felt bigger than fashion.
It felt personal.
The Kindness of Strangers
After a few hours of frustration, I had another thought.
What if someone in London could receive the package for me, put the label on it, and hand it to the FedEx courier?
It felt like a long shot.
But I wrote in a Facebook group for Israelis living in London.
And almost immediately, two women replied.
That moment moved me more than I expected.
Because there is something about Israelis during times of crisis that still amazes me. The willingness to help. The immediate generosity. The instinct to show up for someone you don’t even know just because they asked.
I wrote to both women privately. Both were kind. Both were willing. But one of them had previous experience with FedEx, and that made me feel more secure, so I chose to go with her.
For the first time in days, I felt genuinely excited again.
The plan was finally real.
A woman in London would receive the dress.
She would attach the label.
FedEx would collect it.
And somehow, against all odds, it would make its way to me.
I opened the site, ready to buy the dress.
And then the universe changed the story again.
The Dress Was Gone
The butter yellow dress was sold out.
Just like that.
After everything.
After the messages.
After the failed plans.
After all the emotional energy I had poured into this one specific image in my mind.
Gone.
I remember staring at the screen and feeling genuinely crushed.
It sounds dramatic, I know.
But sometimes disappointment is not really about the object itself.
Sometimes it is about everything you had attached to it.
The fantasy.
The hope.
The relief.
The idea that after enough effort, something would finally work.
And suddenly I felt angry.
Boiling, really.
Like the universe itself was saying, No, not this either.
My sister saw how upset I was and helped me calm down. We started looking again, trying to find something similar.
And then we found the blue one.
The One That Actually Reached Me
It had the same softness in spirit.
The same lace.
The same romantic feeling.
The same House of CB femininity I had fallen for in the first place.
But this one was sky blue.
Not a loud blue.
A pale, powdery, airy kind of blue.
The color of quiet.
The color of distance.
The color of breathing room.
It was slightly longer than the butter yellow dress. The shape at the waist and top was a little different too. And strangely enough, once I really looked at it, I realized I liked the top even more. The straps were more delicate. The neckline softer, more romantic. The whole dress felt like spring translated into fabric.
The butter yellow one had felt like sunlight.
This one felt like sky.
And maybe that was exactly what I needed after all.
So I bought it.
I told the woman in London when to expect the package. They said two to three days.
It arrived the next day.
One small miracle.
One small, practical, beautiful step in the right direction.
Then I booked the FedEx shipment and arranged for the package to be picked up the following Monday.
At that point, the countdown became real.
One week and a day until the photoshoot.
One week and a day for the dress to leave London, cross borders, survive wartime logistics, and somehow reach me in time.
And suddenly I realized how absurd and moving this whole thing had become.
All this effort.
All this emotion.
All this determination.
For a dress.
But of course, by then, it was no longer just about the dress.
What This Was Really About
From the outside, this story might sound almost ridiculous.
A war is happening.
People are worried about safety.
And here I am, chasing lace dresses across continents.
But that is not really the story.
The story is this:
In the middle of chaos, I wanted to choose beauty anyway.
I wanted to give myself something to anticipate besides the next siren, the next update, the next uncertainty. I wanted to reach for softness in a season that felt unbearably hard. I wanted to prove to myself that creativity still has a place even when the world feels unstable.
That photoshoot became more than a photoshoot.
It became a quiet refusal.
A refusal to let fear flatten every tender part of life.
A refusal to believe that beauty must wait for better days.
A refusal to postpone joy indefinitely until the world becomes easier, calmer, safer, simpler.
Because if there is one thing war teaches you, it is that life does not always pause neatly for your emotional readiness.
And if there is one thing I am slowly learning, it is that sometimes hope is not a feeling.
Sometimes it is a decision.
Sometimes it looks like booking the photoshoot anyway.
Sometimes it looks like sending ten emails.
Sometimes it looks like trusting strangers in another city.
Sometimes it looks like choosing the blue dress after mourning the yellow one.
And sometimes it looks like insisting that even now, even here, something beautiful is still worth making.
What I’ll Remember
Maybe, years from now, I won’t remember every shipping detail.
I won’t remember every email or every refusal or every tracking update.
But I think I will remember the feeling.
The stubbornness.
The longing.
The strange tenderness of wanting something beautiful in the middle of something frightening.
And I think I will remember this too:
That in the third week of war, when happy moments felt harder to reach, I still tried to create one.
Not because everything was okay.
But because it wasn’t.
And maybe that is exactly when beauty matters most.
