Social Fabric
Home » Blog » Social FabricSocial Fabric is a sustainable social-entrepreneurial fashion collaboration with female refugees in New Zealand.
Emabet, an Ethiopian refugee, wearing one of the t-shirts she helped make.
The purpose of Social Fabric is to provide displaced women with gainful employment by teaching them how to sew and then paying for their skills as they create aesthetic and sustainable high-end fashion garments.
Founded several years ago, it has earned its creator Kareen Hillenaar, 23, a Master of Art and Design from Auckland’s University of Technology as well as a door into Auckland’s refugee community for further collaboration.
Kareen’s involvement with the Auckland refugee community began with a trip to India three years ago to explore the country and its resources for materials and fair-trade possibilities.
A brief sojourn in Kolkutta delivered an impressionable insight into India’s sustainable economy.
Here Kareen worked alongside women employed by Freeset, a fair-trade business teaching former prostitutes how to sew and then providing them with gainful employment in stark contrast to their former means of living.
The relational component shared by sitting down and making jute bags with these women while viewing Freeset’s sustainable business model firsthand was a memorable experience that would be a key influence on Kareen’s approach to sustainability in New Zealand.
Back home, a proactive process gained Kareen access to the refugee community in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill through local agencies and organisations such as ESOL and New Zealand Somali Women Inc.
Her aim was to re-create something similar to what she saw in India: collaborating with a displaced society in a way that would celebrate their culture and skills whilst providing economic gain.
Teaching English and tutoring sewing (on a machine) became a way of building relationship with the refugee women while at the same time being exposed to their culture.
Soon, the sewing class became a source of income for its participants as the traditional Somali hand-stitching and dying of Social Fabric’s garments grew into paid employment.
When asked what draws her to working with this particular group of people Kareen replies, “The completely different culture.”
“It’s something so foreign but five minutes down the road.”
Although growing up in Taranaki did not provide many opportunities for mingling with displaced communities, a solid upbringing with parents that encouraged her ambitions placed Kareen in good stead to achieve her goals.
Kareen’s fascination with two cultures at odds with one another is clearly conveyed in Social Fabric’s garments which embody the typical emblem of Western style—the t-shirt—with Eastern forms and colour.
Tight-fitting tees are exchanged for loosely-hanging garments that drape the upper-half of the body while the materials, meticulously attended to, are coloured with hand-dyed patterns and embroidered with thread before being swathed in more dyes of green, yellow and blue.
Over ten months the Somali sewing group has been the contributing creator of Social Fabric’s first collection of seven t-shirts and a sweatshirt.
Emabet, an Ethiopian refugee, is one of the project’s collaborators and was photographed wearing a Social Fabric t-shirt for Kareen’s dissertation.
She loved having her picture taken. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she said over and over again as Aaron took photos of her standing by the window—a glimpse of one of the many unlikely relationships weaved within Social Fabric.
Social Fabric is now leaning into the challenge of increasing the scale of its economically sustainable model further in New Zealand and its past and future collaborators look forward to the next collection.
Mon December 14, 2009 @ 09:00 PM
