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Panel  4.3:  Ronaldo  Fraga    

Figure  4.5:  Ronaldo  Fraga’s  summer  collection  2011  in  the  São  Paulo  Fashion  Week,  Brazil.  

    Figure  4.6:  Ronaldo  Fraga’s  winter  collection  2014  in  the  São  Paulo  Fashion  Week,  Brazil.    

 

The  thinking  behind  this  marrying  of  skills  is  the  belief  that  designers  can  support   creative  initiatives  in  the  hope  of  aiding  the  development  of  markets  for  local  and   small  productions.  This  has  proved  to  promote  a  whole  national  market  based  on  local   products,  which  nowadays,  through  design,  could  drop  their  limiting  touristic  and   folkloric  connotations,  even  though  still  deeply  embedding  the  identity  of  the  place.   The  use  of  materials  and  local  technique  has  also  lent  a  distinction  to  design  products.   Although  these  practices  have  brought  recognition  to  the  Brazilian  design  sector  and   elsewhere,  that  recognition  has  only  recently  begun  to  penetrate  academic  

discussions.  The  evident  transformation  of  the  design  scenario  in  Brazil  clearly   demands  a  change  in  design  education  in  this  country,  in  that  although  design  and   crafts  are  not  the  same,  they  can  come  together  in  an  intersection  that  has  proved  to   generate  new  capabilities  for  both  artisan  producers  and  designers  through  the   construction  of  new  and  joint  skills,  aesthetics,  social  and  economic  opportunities,   knowledge  and  identities.    

4.4 Eight collaborations from elsewhere

We  don’t  want  the  fair  trade,  we  want  everything  to  be  fair.   This  is  the  transformation  where  I  put  my  heart  on.    

(Judith  Condor-­‐Vidal  to  Amadeu,  2014)  

 

In  order  to  further  examine  the  implications  and  challenges  experienced  by  designers   working  with  artisan  producers  in  their  local  context,  eight  designers  and/or  social   entrepreneurs  were  interviewed.  The  semi-­‐structured  interviews  had  the  objective  of   revealing  the  common  challenges,  benefits  of  the  practice  and  roles  performed  by  the   designers  in  their  collaborative  approaches  to  local  artisans.  Fashion  is  one  of  the  more  

prominent  areas  that  is  approaching  sustainability  from  a  perspective  of  small-­‐scale   production,  and  this  is  highlighted  in  this  chapter  through  the  interviews.  Fletcher   suggests  that  this  approach  to  localism  can  foster  distinctiveness  in  fashion  and  textiles   (Fletcher,  2013:  168).  

 

The  interviews  provide  a  view  of  the  artisans  and  designers  working  together  in  socio-­‐ cultural  contexts  other  than  in  Brazil.  Thereby  it  gives  hint  of  the  similarities  in  the   aspects  of  the  practice  as  well  as  different  views  and  particularities.  Unfortunately  it   was  not  possible  to  interview  the  artisan  producers  working  with  the  designers,  which   limits  the  stories  of  those  interactions  to  the  designers’  points  of  view.  Nonetheless,   Section  4.4.6  of  this  chapter,  and  Chapters  6  and  7,  bring  to  the  fore  artisan  producers   from  the  Amazon  rainforest.    

4.4.1 The designers and their approaches

A  brief  introduction  to  the  interviewees  follows  below.  They  all  work  in  the  area  of   fashion  and  were  interviewed  between  2013  and  2014:    

 

Judith  Condor-­‐Vidal  (2014)  is  a  Bolivian  economist,  the  founder  of  Trading  for  

Development,  whose  social  enterprise  brings  local  fair  trades  from  developing   countries  such  as  Peru,  Bolivia,  Bangladesh  and  Ecuador  to  a  British  and  European   market.  Her  business  exemplifies  a  mix  of  bottom-­‐up-­‐top-­‐down  social  innovation  and   entrepreneurship,  resulting  as  it  did  from  initiatives  by  local  artisans,  who  gathered   together  to  send  her  boxes  of  samples  of  their  work  in  the  hope  that  she  could  sell  

their  products  in  Europe  after  the  success  of  an  exhibition  that  she  organized.   Nowadays,  the  artisan  producers  that  supply  the  Trading  for  Development  operate   within  the  certification  of  the  World  Fair  Trade  Organization  (WFTO).    

 

Lynda  Grose  (2013)  is  a  British  designer,  an  educator  at  California  College  of  the  Arts  

(CCA)  and  an  author.  She  has  been  working  with  numerous  communities  in  Romania,   Peru,  Kyrgyzstan,  Kazakhstan,  America,  Armenia,  Ecuador  and  Ghana.  In  1992,   Grose  cofounded  ESPRIT’s  ecollection,  which  became  known  as  the  first  ecologically   responsible  fashion  collection  developed  by  a  major  corporation.  

 

Anna-­‐Maria  Hesse  (2014)  is  one  of  the  owners  of  the  Here  Today  Here  Tomorrow  

fashion  design  label  (Panel  4.4),  a  studio  shop  in  London.  The  brand  exemplifies  a  small   business  led  by  social  and  environmental  principles,  as  discussed  in  Chapter  3  (Section   3.5.2).  The  designers  have  been  working  with  a  WFTO  fair  trade23  cooperative  

Association  of  Craft  Producers  (ACP)  in  Nepal,  which  employs  mostly  women  whose   skills  are  in  hand-­‐knitting,  hand-­‐weaving  and  block  printing.  The  designers  travel   regularly  to  Kathmandu,  where  they  work  with  the  local  artisan  producers  of  a  local   cooperative.    

 

                                                                                                               

23  Fair  trade’s  aim  is  to  links  local  producers  with  retailers’  and  consumers’  goals  in  a  logic  of  a  fairer  global  market  

in  which  ethical  principles  should  be  part  of  all  phases  of  the  business,  from  the  harvesting  of  raw  materials  to  the   shops  and  stores.  This  certification  and  others  similar,  such  as  those  by  the  Fairtrade  Foundation,  the  World  Trade   Organization  (WFTO),  the  Rainforest  Alliance,  Fair  Mined,  the  Alliance  for  Responsible  Mining  (ARM)  and  Good   Weavers,  emphasizes  businesses’  good  practices  –  that  respect  human  rights  and  dignity  –  and  regulate  production   chains  through  social  and  environmental  policies  (Fairtrade  Foundation,  2014;  Black,  2012:  203).  These  standards   vary  of  course  according  to  the  association  (Parker,  2011:  10),  but  a  common  ground  is  to  promote  fairer  

relationships  and  prices  in  the  trading  of  local  products.  In  addition,  one  of  the  core  policies  of  Fairtrade  is  to  build   capacity  among  producers  comprising,  for  example,  the  development  of  interpersonal,  communication  and   business  skills  (Black,  2012:  203;  Littrell  and  Dickson,  2010:  99;  1999:  4–5).