Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean (right) has been working with the Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI), using Haitian craftsmanship in areas such as embroidery and beadwork in her collections. Credit: ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative 5

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Jun 4 2015 (IPS)

“Work is dignity,” says Simone Cipriani. “People want employment, not charity.”

With that in mind, Italian-born Cipriani founded a programme in 2009 called the Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) that links some of the world’s top fashion talents to marginalised artisans – mostly women – in East and West Africa, Haiti and the West Bank.

Now a flagship programme of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Geneva-based EFI works with leading designers such as Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood to facilitate the development and production of “high-quality, ethical fashion items” from artisans living in low-income rural and urban areas.

The EFI says its aim is also to “enable Africa’s rising generation of fashion talent to forge environmentally sound, sustainable and fulfilling creative collaborations with local artisans.” Under its slogan “not charity, just work”, the Initiative advocates for a fairer global fashion industry.“We work with women who sometimes face discrimination in their communities, but by having a job, their position in society improves. They gain independence and respect, and in many situations they become the only breadwinner in their families” – Simone Cipriani, Ethical Fashion Initiative

This year, for the first time, the EFI is collaborating with the most important international trade fair for men’s fashion, Pitti Immagine Uomo, to host designers who represent four African countries.

Taking place June 16 to 19 in Florence, Italy, the fair will present a special edition of its Guest Nation Project, in which a particular area is designated for the “rising stars” of fashion from various countries, according to Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of Pitti.

Napoleone said that the African designers in this year’s Guest Nation give priority to manufacturing in their home countries, helping to reduce poverty, and that they are already known on the international market.

The stylists will put on a runway show, highlighting their men’s collections, in a special event titled ‘Constellation Africa’. The brands – Dent de Man, MaXhosa by Laduma, Orange Culture and Projecto Mental – have designers who represent Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa, Nigeria and Angola, and were selected as part of the African Fashion Designer competition launched by the EFI last December.

“This is where our global society is going: interconnectedness. Global and local dimensions brought together through fashion,” said Cipriani.

Market analysts expect the global value of the apparel retail industry to rise about 20 percent from 2014 levels to reach some 1,500 billion dollars in 2017. With such high volumes, the various sectors of the industry could be an increasing source of employment in many regions, from design to garment-making to sales.

But over the past several years, there has been controversy about the apparent exclusion of fashion designers and models of African descent in high-profile ‘Fashion Weeks’ and other international events

Tansy E. Hoskins, author of a polemical book published last year titled Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, has a whole chapter devoted to the question “Is Fashion Racist?”

She says that several decades after a renowned fashion magazine had its first black model on the cover, “all-white catwalks, all-white advertising campaigns and all-white fashion shoots are still the norm”.

Simone Cipriani, founder of the Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI). Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

The Ethical Fashion Initiative is primarily concerned with poverty reduction and ethical treatment of artisans, but Cipriani acknowledges that racism is an issue and that poverty can be linked to ethnicity as well as gender.

Still, the fashion industry does have companies that try to adhere to ethical standards, including diversity, working conditions and environmental sustainability; and 30 international brands have signed on to the EFI project. But not every company is a good fit.

“We try to work almost exclusively with brands that have a clear scheme on responsible business and social engagement, otherwise there’s always the risk of being used and having to clean up after somebody else,” Cipriani told IPS in an interview, during a trip to Paris to meet with designers.

“We’ve had our troubles and have had to work through a long learning curve”, he added. “We also tried to work with big distributors and realised it wasn’t possible for what we do, so here we are.”

Groups such as the EFI and activists like Hoskins say that their major concern is how to make the fashion industry fairer, particularly with decent labour conditions for workers everywhere.

Two years ago in Bangladesh, for instance, more than 1,100 workers died and 2,500 were injured when a factory building collapsed after safety warnings were ignored. The workers made clothing for brands including Benetton, which only this year announced that it would contribute to a compensation fund for the victims.

That agreement followed a campaign in which one million people signed an online petition calling for the company to take proper action.

“What happened in Bangladesh was a horror, and there are many situations in which exactly the same horror can occur,” Cipriani said. “The first thing about responsibility should always be people. Dignified working conditions for people.”

He said that many artisans working in the fashion industry’s supply chain also do not earn enough to live on. “They don’t get the remuneration for their work that allows them to have a dignified life,” he told IPS. “Many of them are paid in such a way that they have to live at the margin.”

In Haiti, which is known for its artistry as well as its poverty, activists say that linking local artisans with international designers can and have made some impact. The Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean has been working with EFI, using Haitian craftsmanship in areas such as embroidery and beadwork in her collections, for example. She also employs textiles made in Africa.

Jean has been an EFI “partner” since 2013 and she sources several elements of her designs through its projects, Cipriani said. The collaboration started with a visit to Burkina Faso – one of the largest producers of cotton in Africa with an important tradition of hand-weaving – where the designer saw the possibilities of “working with these ethically produced textiles”. She incorporated them as a key feature of her women’s and men’s ready-to-wear collections.

Last year, she also launched a new range of bags, produced in Kenya with fabric from Burkina Faso and Mali and vegetable-tanned leather from Kenya, “making each bag a pan-African product,” says the EFI.

In Kenya, British designers McCartney (who declined to be interviewed) and Westwood have placed several orders for fashion items, and the EFI has carried out “Impact Assessment” studies to evaluate compliance with fair labour standards “and the impact the orders had on people and the communities they live in.”

“We work with women who sometimes face discrimination in their communities, but by having a job, their position in society improves,” Cipriani told IPS. “They gain independence and respect, and in many situations they become the only breadwinner in their families.”

The Ethical Fashion Initiative has testimonials from artisans about the improvement in their lives from the income they received through the orders, with several workers detailing their new ability to pay rent and school fees, among other developments.

Hoskins says that these steps are important, but that the fashion industry cannot be fully transformed without massive, collective action. “Ethical fashion has become a catch-all phrase encompassing issues such as environmental toxicity, labour rights, air miles, animal cruelty and product sustainability,” she argues.

“After 20 or so years and despite some innovative initiatives, it holds an ‘exceptionally low market share’ at just over 1 percent of the overall apparel market.”

In an interview, she said that asking whether fashion can ever be ethical is like asking “can capitalism ever be ethical?”

“For me the answer is ‘no’ because it’s based on exploitation, it’s based on competition, and above all it’s based on profit, and that’s what in the fashion industry drives wages down, drives environmental standards down and down and down,” she told IPS.

“There are small companies doing things differently but they’re producing maybe a few thousand units every year. The fashion industry produces billions and billions of units every single year.”

Hoskins also asked the question: “Why is it not the case that all products are ethically made?”

But reform evidently takes time. With the Pitti trade fair in Italy now collaborating with EFI, the “ethical fashion” movement may get a boost. It is also up to consumers to make the right choices, activists say.

“Consumers must demand change. Consumers can’t be too docile,” says Cipriani.

Edited by Phil Harris    

A model wearing YeFikir clothing. Growing international recognition for designers in Ethiopia and Africa is partly a result of growing demand for ethically-produced fashion designs. Credit: Kyle La Mere/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 20 2014 (IPS)

Female fashion designers are drawing on Ethiopia’s rich cultural heritage and adding a modern twist to find success at home and increasingly impress abroad. 

In fact, fashion design is proving to be one of the most successful Ethiopian sectors for small business and entrepreneurs, generating profit margins ranging from 50 percent to more than 100 percent, according to Mahlet Afework, the 25-year-old Addis Ababa-based founder of fashion line MAFI.

The country is a fashion designer’s dream due to its multiple ethnic groups from which one can draw design inspiration, Mahlet tells IPS. Her most recent collection was inspired by the Dinguza pattern from southern Ethiopia’s Chencha region.“[Ethiopia’s fashion industry] is showing the diversity and beauty of Ethiopian culture, and providing some of the world’s best hand-woven cotton fabrics.” -- Fikirte Addis, fashion designer and founder of YeFikir Design

Small companies like Mahlet’s can flourish due to the absence of big chain department stores, and relatively low start-up costs set against high prices individuals are willing to pay for quality hand-made fashion garments

And the economy at large is benefiting from increased international interest in Ethiopia’s textile and garment industry. The industry’s small-scale businesses, with a labour force of 10 or less, registered exports of 62.2 million dollars in 2011, up from 14.6 million dollars in 2008.

And the Ethiopian government believes the industry can raise its aggregate production value to 2.5 billion dollars by the end of 2015.

Ethiopia’s successful fashion designers are predominantly women, according to Mahlet and other designers, who grew up surrounded by traditionally woven cotton fabrics, learning from mothers and aunts the tailoring and embroidering skills for making beautiful and delicate clothing.

This female-inspired heritage is not forgotten. Mahlet works exclusively with female weavers to help them support themselves and their families amid a male-dominated weaving sector.

Despite many designers having the advantage of a home-spun fashion education, a lack of formal fashion design education is preventing many from breaking out internationally, says Mahlet, who is self-taught and credits Google Search as her primary tutor.

Another problem in the international arena is conducting sales transactions.

Ethiopian banking restrictions mean there are no foreign banks in Ethiopia and international customers are often reluctant to pay into African banking accounts, fashion designer Fikirte Addis, founder of Addis Ababa-based YeFikir Design, tells IPS.

The company currently has to sell through Africa Design Hub, a U.S.-based online store founded in 2013 by Western expatriates to showcase African designs.

“After living in East Africa for several years we saw the potential of African designs in the global market,” the store’s co-founder Elizabeth Brown tells IPS.

She also noticed a gap in market linkages and knowledge sharing between the industry and global consumers, which Africa Design Hub seeks to bridge.

Currently almost all of its customers are in the U.S., although this year it plans to start selling products to Canada and Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that have shown interests in African-made goods.

Fashion design success in Ethiopia also depends on embracing the ever-changing present while keeping an eye on the past, Fikirte says.

A weaver making fabric for YeFikir Design. Credit: Salima Punjani/IPS

All YeFikir designs are made by hand or on traditional weaving machines operated by those using techniques that go back centuries to when Ethiopians made all their own clothing. 

“I love the traditional aspect of the clothing,” Rihana Aman, a café owner in Addis Ababa, who visited the YeFikir shop to buy a wedding dress, tells IPS. “So many dresses now are too modern, and use fabrics that lose what it means to be Ethiopian.”

Fikirte deals directly with and visits weavers she sources from to ensure that skills and incomes stay within communities, and practises remain ethical. She notes how children have been trafficked within the weaving industry.

As a result of the painstaking time and work required to make the garments, YeFikir custom-made dresses can sell for up to 15,300 birr (850 dollars), a sizeable sum, especially in a country where many toil for no more than 50 birr (3 dollars) a day.

Despite such apparent inequities, many Ethiopians — especially those in the growing middle class — remain content to pay handsomely for tailored garments with traditional influences, Mahlet says.

Ethiopians take great pride in the country’s ethnic diversity — around 84 languages and 200 dialects are spoken — and in displaying allegiances through clothing at special events such as weddings and festivals, Mahlet says.

This demand is seeping into the mainstream also. Mahlet’s clothing line MAFI specialises in ready-to-wear garments offering a notably funky take on the country’s ethnic melting pot. And it is a take that has proved successful.

International interest in Ethiopia’s fashion scene is undoubtedly growing — in 2012 Mahlet showcased her work at African Fashion Week New York. However, there are still some misconceptions. On a European flight, Mahlet recalls sitting next to a passenger who was surprised to hear that fashion designers existed in Ethiopia.

Others are not so surprised.

“Ethiopia has some wonderful and interesting craftsmanship,” Markus Lupfer, a London-based fashion designer of international repute who since 2010 has worked with Ethiopian fashion designers, told IPS.

Growing international recognition for designers in Ethiopia and Africa is partly a result of growing demand for ethically-produced fashion designs, Lupfer says.

Although for now such recognition still eludes many of Ethiopia’s fashion designers. And while local demand remains buoyant, designers agree that international demand remains the key to success.

Hence Mahlet and Fikirte plan to bolster their companies’ online presences this year. Both share a goal of exporting clothes to boutiques and online stores — and want to show the world what Ethiopian designers are capable of.

“Ethiopia’s fashion industry is changing the image of Ethiopia,” Fikirte says. “It is showing the diversity and beauty of Ethiopian culture, and providing some of the world’s best hand-woven cotton fabrics.”

Yara Mashour, editor of Lilac magazine, wants to confront and challenge stereotypes of Arab women. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
NAZARETH, Northern Israel, May 17 2013 (IPS)

With a subtle blend of colour and shadow, 20-year-old Sumoud Farraj prepares for a photo shoot. Next month, along with three other young Arab women, she’ll appear in a designer miniskirt on the cover of Lilac, an Arabic-language women’s magazine.

Lilac‘s editor-in-chief, Yara Mashour, is in the business of breaking taboos and stereotypes with beauty and fashion. “Lilac isn’t just a regular fashion magazine; it’s a magazine with a cause,” she stresses.

The “cause” is to try to change how Arab women see themselves, how Arab men see them, and how Jewish Israelis see their fellow citizens of Palestinian descent (one in five Israelis is Arab).

In traditional societies accustomed to veiling beauty, exposing one’s beauty requires no small amount of steadfastness – sumoud in Arabic, and Farraj’s first name.

“Some people reject me because of my modelling ambitions,” says Farraj. “I can live with rejection. I am who I am, and I’ll move forward to be known – not just in Israel, but around the world.”

“Our predicament as Arab women demands a mini-revolution – to help ourselves attain freedom, mental and social, and realise ourselves, because we often need our husband’s, parents’, and society’s permission to do something daring.”

Challenging stereotypes

In 2011, Mashour decided to publish a cover picture of Huda Naqash, a Nazarene model crowned Miss Earth, in a bikini swimsuit. It was the first time ever that an Arab woman posed for an Arab magazine in such an outfit.

“Miss Huda rocks this earth!” read the caption. Thanks to the Internet, the tremor was felt throughout the Arab world, arousing a passionate virtual debate with over 70,000 mostly critical posts on the Saudi Arabia-owned Al-Arabiya website.

The suggestive photo was meant to illustrate engrained misconceptions and stereotyping of Arab society in general, Mashour points out. “There was no earthquake,” she adds. “Naqash didn’t get killed. No one threatened her. More than a model in bikini, the picture showed that Arab societies are gradually becoming more liberal in accepting changes.”

“I’m confident in my readers,” adds Mashour. “They mustn’t agree with me – you don’t like Lilac, don’t buy it – but we must debate in a democratic manner.”

Unperturbed by what she calls “this ridiculous media buzz”, she followed up last fall with the same model posing in sexy lingerie.

Powered by women

On Mashour’s desk sit copies of Lilac‘s ancestors from the 1970s, with models in poses more indolent than Naqash’s. “We went through many changes,” she says.

She evokes the Egyptian cinema’s golden era – its suggestive scenes and passionate kisses – and the ensuing conservative reaction. “Now we’re trying to revisit that period of freedom.”"We're trying to revisit that period of freedom."
-- Yara Mashour

“I’m ready to pose in sexy lingerie,” affirms Farraj.

Lilac is the hook at the end of “The Fishing Rod”, or As-Sinara. Founded in 1983 by Mashour’s father, Lutfi, As-Sinara was the first independent Arabic-language weekly published in Israel.

Following Lutfi Mashour’s death in 2007, the three women in his life inherited his media venture. Yara became Lilac‘s editor, her sister Varia took over the advertising agency, and their mother Vida replaced her late husband as senior editor.

Common wisdom had it that with women at the helm, the newspaper would soon write its own eulogy. Yet As-Sinara remains Israel’s most widely circulated Arabic-language weekly and only newspaper managed by women.

“Women are more open and courageous than men,” quips Varia Mashour. “The male staff are scared of changes. We try things until things work out.”

Pushing for equality

Female innovation – more than empowerment – is what drives Yara Mashour. To innovate, she says, is to break the encirclement of her own existential isolation as a woman in a mainly conservative community, as a Christian in a mainly Muslim society, as a Palestinian in a mainly Jewish state, and as an Israeli in a mainly Arab Middle East.

“We’re on our own,” she confides. “We’re politically uncertain of our place. We want Israel and the world to see us and understand us, to accept us as equal in terms of laws, society and economy.”

Her father would say, “We say we’re first Palestinians; second – Arabs; third – Israelis. But in reality, we behave first like Israelis; then like Arabs; and only then like Palestinians. We’re Israeli – the way we think; react; speak. In essence, we’re all the same, Jews, Arabs. They, the Jews, are the other part of us.”

“I’m a Palestinian,” stresses Mashour. “I’m an Arab; I’m a woman; I’m an Israeli. And I’m trying to make people who’re part of this definition accept me, because I’ve accepted them.”

It’s easier to convince Arab Israelis that women should be equal to men than to convince Jewish Israelis that Arab Israeli women and men should be equal to them, Mashour notes. “Israeli Jews are stuck; know very little about us, though we’re looking them in the face.”

“The one good thing is that Jews and Arabs who live together influence each other,” Mashour adds on a more optimistic note, showing the current cover of 19-year old Lina Makhoul, an Arab woman from the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Acre who just won Israel’s version of “The Voice”.

For Lilac‘s next issue, business-like Mashour has a more traditional cover of a model dressed in a wedding gown.

“In our society, marriage is still the most important ‘job’. We bring to light any woman who wants to achieve a career. Become economically independent, then get married and have children,” she urges, conceding that this goal has not yet been reached. “But we’ve opened an expanding fashion and modelling industry.”

“My next project is to find a Palestinian model from Palestine to participate in international pageants, and to wear a bikini – if that’s what’s required,” but Mashour knows that this task will not be easy.

In the foreground, salvaged materials; in the background, fashion design students in action. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 21 2012 (IPS)

A Brazilian designer has taken fashion from the exclusivity of the catwalk to the reality of the favela, to demonstrate that styles, trends and fads are also born in these poor neighborhoods of cities like Rio de Janeiro.

The Mangueira favela or shantytown, home to some 18,000 people, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Milan or Paris.

Once overrun by drug trafficking-related violence, Mangueira is currently undergoing a process of “pacification”– a government strategy combining police repression and social spending. Few of the streets here are paved, most of the houses are unfinished, and the clothing tastes of the female residents run towards very short shorts and skin-tight pants.

“We’re the ones who set trends. Whatever we wear here on the mountain (the steep hillside where the favela is located), a week later, someone is already wearing it out there,” Mangueira resident Vanesa de Oliveira told Tierramérica*.

A different type of braid, a shoe style, a stitching detail on a blouse, or some other idea that occurs one day to a woman in the favela: all of it eventually ends up on the other side of the world, or “out there” as Oliveira sees it.

These new trends spread quickly through the city, because “the people up here are very creative. We’re not afraid to be daring; we don’t care about what people will say. If a woman puts something on, looks in the mirror and thinks she looks good, nothing else matters.”

Oliveira’s point of view seems diametrically opposed to that of Fashion Week in Rio de Janeiro. Held during the Southern hemisphere spring, when temperatures soar above 30 degrees, it showcases the colors and textures dictated by the frigid European winter.

“There are various political struggles, and one of them is the construction of our identity. Are we going to use fabrics from other cultures, adapted to other geographical settings and temperatures? What kind of textile industry do we want?” asked Brazilian fashion designer Almir França, in an interview with Tierramérica.

França is seeking the answers to those questions though EcoModa, a project he is coordinating in Mangueira. In the favela that gave birth to the samba school of the same name, one of the highlights of Rio’s annual Carnival, the project currently offers classes in sewing, embroidery, fashion design and modeling to 150 students.

“The idea is to recognise that fashion in Brazil is born on the periphery, in the suburbs,” said França.

“Contrary to the common belief – that fashion is something very elitist, imposed by Paris, created in Europe – fashions and trends in Brazil are actually established by the majority of the population,” he maintained.

Tierramérica interviewed França at the project headquarters in Mangueira where the courses are being offered, thanks in part to the support of the Ministry of Environment of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

One wall is covered with wallpaper recycled from the dressing rooms of the Mangueira samba school. Hot pink and green, the trademark colors of this Rio Carnival institution, cover another wall brimming with flowers.

The chairs, rescued from garbage dumps, have been revived with fabric remnants recovered from a textile factory.

Oliveira is one of the students in the sewing class. She is using the opportunity to sew a dress for her daughter to wear at a school performance.

Other students are taking classes in embroidery, fashion design and modeling. The common thread running through all the activities is an emphasis on reusing materials and causing the least possible impact on the environment.

The goal is to “get into the students’ heads that it is possible to recycle, that creation does not always have to come from something new, that fashion does not have to be synonymous with consumerism, that transformation is another possibility,” said Vanesa Melo, the administrative director of EcoModa.

The textile industry wastes huge amounts of materials, she told Tierramérica. For example, 20 percent of the fabric used to make a shirt goes unused.

EcoModa works with these cast-offs from the textile industry, with the sequins and feathers left behind from Carnival, even with plastic bottles and glasses.

“The big struggle facing human kind today is survival, and environmental issues are closely linked to this,” said França.

“Our job is to recover everything that has been lost,” commented Melo.

One of those losses is the self-esteem of the women of the favelas, tarnished by the stigma of poverty and violence.

Yet many of the creations worn on the runways by “top models” are crafted on the modest worktables of seamstresses from the favelas.

“Those who truly construct fashion are these seamstresses. That’s why, in the construction of our identity, we are also seeking to create fashion that combines the creative process with environmental awareness and social inclusion,” said França.

The EcoModa course appeared like a “gift from heaven” for Andrea Ferrancini, precisely when she needed a new source of income more than ever. She is especially enthusiastic about the possibility of becoming part of a cooperative, based on the principles of the solidarity economy.

“Ours is a fashion of resistance, of visibility, based on a conception of esthetics as social change,” said França.

EcoModa also seeks to distance itself from the international fashion industry, which uses cheap or even semi-slave labour to lower costs and increase profits.

“In other places people are enslaved or turned into mere cogs in the wheel. We want to make people active participants in the entire process of creating, producing and earning profits,” stressed Ministry of Environment representative Ingrid Geromilich.

“We don’t want to create a green label of solidarity to exploit cheap labour. We want these people to play a leading role in their own story,” she told Tierramérica.

Janice Lima wants to be a part of this process. She currently earns a living from home sales of cosmetics, and is taking the classes because they offer “the opportunity for a profession.”

The women barely lift their heads from their sewing machines, sketches and designs, scissors and scraps of fabric.

Their final creations will be modeled by young women from the favela at a fashion show organised by the police unit involved in the pacification operation in Mangueira. This time, for a change, the catwalk will not be in Paris, Milan or the exclusive beachfront neighborhoods of Rio.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

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