The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that fashion can have a positive impact on people's lives, with designers making PPE or brands sponsoring vaccination hubs.
As the days pass and things are slowly but gradually returning to normal, we must try and develop what we have learnt to make sure that fashion can be used as a dynamic force not to generate money just for a few ones, but to start projects that can bring tangible changes to people's lives.
Young South African designer Thebe Magugu, the recipient of the LVMH Prize in 2019, for example, recently worked on an installation for Paris' Bon Marché Rive Gauche store.
Entitled "Porte-Bonheurs" (Lucky Charms; until 17th October) it consists of thousands of green lianas sprouting colourful fabric flowers hanging from the glass ceilings of the department store. The flowers were also used to spell out in the department store windows words of love and hope.
Yet this is not just another commercial installation combining art and fashion supposed to attract more consumers to the department store, it has indeed got an aim and a purpose that go beyond its visual beauty.
The event was created in collaboration with NGO Dessine l'Espoir and the flowers were made, sewn and embroidered by 120 women living in vulnerable situations in four workshops supported by the non-governmental organisation, two in Eswatini, in Piggs Peak and Bulembu; and two in South Africa, in Roosboom and Johannesburg.
The women associated with the project made 20,000 flowers and their work allowed their families to pull through Covid-19. The association also donated to the women's workshops several sewing machines, but there is more that we can do.
The brooch flowers in seven colours including aqua green, yellow, navy blue and red, symbols of fragility and generosity, are indeed on sale (15 and 20 euros, depending on their size) on a dedicated site, www.lesfleursdethebe.fr.
Fashionistas will be happy to hear they all bear Thebe Magugu's signature tag and 20% of them feature a petal cut from designer print fabric.
By selling the flowers Dessine l'Espoir will be able to finance a new project: the Jardin des Savoir-Faire, in the village of Malanti, in Eswatini.
The project will include a garden and training center where people will be able to learn more about agroecology, crafts and micro management. All the courses run there will be aimed at local people but in particular at disadvantaged women and children.
The "Jardin des savoir-faire" will provide them with workshops equipped for sewing, crafts, processing garden products and acquiring knowledge in nutrition, while cottages on site will be reserved for solidarity tourism and accommodate volunteers who can share their know-how.
Thebe Magugu is focused on fashion, but also engages in extracurricular activities such as creating exhibitions, catalogues and fanzines that promote new African voices, besides he has also got a passion for exploring concepts and ideas through multidisciplinary capsule projects.
Hopefully, he will manage to develop further installations or collections with solidarity in mind: working on such projects may be challenging for a young designer, but if he manages to do so, he will set himself apart from other young brands and will also find new inspirations for his future collections as the women who worked on his "Lucky Charms" project have stories to tell, but some of them have also got great craft skills to share.
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