Ethics may not be a word you often associate with fashion. We headed along to the launch at Nathan House of Karen Walker’s Visible Eyewear campaign on Friday…
We headed along to the launch at Nathan House of Karen Walker’s Visible Eyewear campaign on Friday 21st March…
Karen Walker’s Visible Eyewear campaign focuses on more than just eyewear. She has been working collaboratively with Simone Cipriani, the Chief Technical Advisor for the Ethical Fashion Initiative who is also head of the United Nations’ Poor Communities and Trade Programme.
Ethics may not be a word you often associate with fashion, however in Karen Walker’s latest campaign it is high on the agenda.
The pair first met in 2011 and had previously undertaken a project that for Karen Walker, opened up a new and exciting way of seeing fashion benefit disadvantaged communities and change up the creative process.
Below L-R: Simone Cirpriani, Derek Henderson, and Karen Walker at the launch.
“It begins with looking at what skills or materials are available from the particular area and how they can be utilised”. In her latest range of Karen Walker Eyewear, the artisans of the local community contributed to the making of the eyewear pouches offering their unique skills in African beading and designs.
Photographing the campaign was photographer, Derek Henderson, who has captured the essence of these African artisans by using a grey canvas as a background to bring the focus onto the individual and not the environment.
For Simone Cipriani, who works with a dedicated team of sociologists and anthropologists and has lived on site in some of these African communities often with no sanitation or health care, it is a subject he remains passionate about. He quotes Oscar Wilde when stating that we need to look at our value system; we have the “price of everything and the value of nothing”, meaning sometimes the expense is present but we have lost the artist or the value along the way.
Having worked alongside other designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney to look at long-term sustainable projects, he and Karen Walker see a future of other possible projects. When asked about her latest campaign he replies it is “beautiful, she has done this in a beautiful way”.
By Amelia Jamieson
24 March 2014
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