The Stories Behind the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange
Commonwealth gallery
Yesterday’s packed Buckingham Palace celebration of the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange was an inspirational landmark for the human potential of fashion to make positive impacts on the lives of people—women in particular—across the world. Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Commonwealth secretary-general, with Livia Firth (and her extraordinarily persuasive organizational powers of determination to reform the damage wreaked on the environment by fashion), leveraged perhaps the biggest set of collaborations in history.
“We’re not talking anymore; we’re doing,” said Firth. “At Eco-Age, we have so many conversations about how to get people to understand the negative effects of fast fashion. We thought this was a real opportunity to demonstrate the handprint, not the footprint, of fashion.”
The result: The Queen’s State Rooms were lined with more than 30 sustainably produced, handcrafted ball gowns, representing the cultures, identities, and creative skills of 52 countries, from the large—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Britain—to the tiniest of islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean.
The overarching point, said Baroness Scotland, “Is about engaging young people and using fashion as a thread that connects everyone.” She quoted staggering statistics: A third of the Commonwealth’s 2.4 billion citizens are under the age of 30—a vast generation primed to be interested in fashion and involved in it as workers. “It is the second-largest employer of women in developing countries.”
At a time when the attraction of handwork is on the up in fashion, Firth pointed out that craft methods, by nature, are some of the least damaging to the planet. “Artisans have a shorter supply chain [when they are] using hand-looming and not working with artificial fibers.” A vital partner involved in the quest was Nest, an NGO dedicated to improving women’s well-being and preserving cultural traditions, reaching isolated homeworkers to empower them to know their rights and establish fair-trade practices. “We researched every single country and every supply chain. We help them by applying 10 principles of production—and from all this, we have built an amazing database, which is going to be available for everyone to access on the Google Arts & Culture platform.”
Last night, the conversations and connections made under the gilded palace ceilings made for some incredible, eye-opening stories. Vanessa Winston of the Dominica Arts and Crafts Producers Association told her powerfully moving experience of resilience against terrible odds. “Hurricane Mario came in September. My home was destroyed,” she said. “The only place left standing was my craft workshop, where we sheltered for weeks. It has been terrible, but in a way, this challenge came as divine intervention,” said Winston. “It lifted me to work on it. It’s helped me and the women who work with me to think, ‘What’s next?’ ” Winston’s leather cummerbund, decorated with intricate hammered butterflies, was the centerpiece on the coconut-fiber woven gown made by Meiling, a designer from Trinidad and Tobago. She grasped her hand. “And she delivered this on time!”
Karen Walker, New Zealand’s premier fashion designer, was there with her collaborator, the 70-year-old holder-in-chief of the heritage tivaevae techniques that go into women’s marriage quilts in the Cook Islands. “These bedspreads are a transference of love. They are never sold,” said Ms. Turiu, of Kuki Airani Creative Mamas. Walker commissioned a tivaevae appliqué for her strapless gown, embroidered with a pattern. “It’s a feminist craft; it took a thousand hours to embroider the design on this dress, which incorporates 10 flowers of the Pacific islands. It’s storytelling. I love the boldness and the energy of it.”
Afa Ah Loo was thrilled to represent Samoa. “I wanted to show we are the happy people of Polynesia,” he beamed. Now a bridal designer in Utah, he’d partnered with craftspeople in Papua New Guinea to make a gown with a woven coconut bodice and a swirling train printed with luscious pink ginger flowers.
The Cypriot designer Afroditi Hera—who is already selling in Linda Fargo’s hand-picked selection in Bergdorf Goodman—had paired up with the Kiribati Handicraft Association, which is based on an island close to Fiji. Hera was wearing one of her printed tapestry caftans with a traditional silk-woven panel as she showed the impressive Kiribati woven grass and cowrie shell–embroidered neck cuff and armlets that had come together from the other side of the globe.
More than anything, it was an uplifting night with insights exchanged on all sides—and some illuminating rays of hope of real progress. In many ways, the moral was that the West is not ahead when it comes to putting change into action. Designer Piera Ntayomba from Rwanda worked her Haute Baso—her piece from upcycled mosquito net, paper beads, and reclaimed glass beads woven by the Ugandan Ihato crafts organization. Ntayomba spoke eloquently about the predominance of young female entrepreneurs in her country. “Female businesswomen are respected and we have more women politicians in government than in Canada, where I went to school. I would say it’s a great time for young women in Rwanda—and that’s why I returned,” she said. “And, as a whole country, we prioritize sustainability and the environment. It’s normal.”
