The Fashion Revolution 2018
This week is Fashion Revolution Week and the 5th anniversary of the devastating Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. A week for everyone around the world to ask “who made my clothes?” and further, “who made my homewares and accessories?"
At Cielo, it is so important for us to be transparent about where our pieces come from and to share with you the stories behind each artisan group that we work with. We want you to value our pieces not just for their beauty and design, but for the hands that make them.
Evelia from the Weaving Women of Santo Tomas Jalieza
Albina weaving as her husband watches on
We work directly with women’s weaving cooperatives and small family businesses to ensure that they all earn a fair income to support their families, work from home (while caring for their little ones) and provide their children with an education. Each co-op/family business determines what their wages should be for each order and we respect that.
When we visited our artisan partners 2 years ago it was so beautiful to see women weaving their designs in their own homes, surrounded by their family and children. We would sit in the workshops of our artisan partners and watch husband and wife teams working alongside each other all day. It was truly so special.
Juan & Silvia in their Family Workshop
Women from the Jolom Mayaetik Cooperative Working together in their community
Our artisan partners work in their own time frames, on their own terms and when we receive designs that have taken months to make, we think back to our time spent with them. There are no ‘middle men’ and each co-op or family business reinvests the money received for their work back into their co-op/business. As we grow, they grow.
We understand the importance of creating new designs to contribute to the preservation of hand weaving and hand embroidery techniques. Out of the 6 artisan groups that we work with 5 create new textile or embroidery designs in collaboration with us. Over the past 2 years we have worked on approximately 5 collections with each group and have more in the works, which we are extremely proud of.
We work with 1 family business that uses textiles found in local markets and they try their best to use every part of the textile when creating their designs. We create smaller pieces such as key rings to ensure that this happens and to ultimately reduce waste.
Betty and her mother Victoria from the Single Mothers Cooperative of San Juan La Laguna, weaving in their road side store
Anita, Maria, Margarita & Maria from the Jolom Mayaetik Cooperative
There is still a lot to be done. We are learning as we grow and as we receive more orders over time, we hope to provide all of our artisan partners with a sustainable income.
You can read about all of our artisan partners in the Artisan Page on our website. Businesses will rarely name who they work with and we take pride in sharing all of that information with you.
Women from the Teixchel Weaving Association in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala
Thank you so much for reading,
- Skye & Moacir.
You can head to our Artisan Page here!
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