Veronica, Louise and Stinne wanted to do something with women in prison while following their ethical principles and focusing on quality, sustainability, and good materials. All aimed at creating timeless and unique pieces. To start the adventure, they researched the poorest regions with the highest rates of incarcerated women and with the best materials. This made them travel to Peru, where their first idea made sense and became a reality.
They’ve been working with a team of imprisoned women there who know how to work with materials as luxurious as alpaca; in exchange, they provide them with higher salaries than the average, make them feel useful, train them, and let them prove their skills and develop them even more. But it was not about charity, at least, not in a traditional, vertical way; it was something else.
The founders of Carcel are compromised, revolutionary, and powerful, and that’s what they want to reflect through their clothes and what they want the imprisoned women to become. It is an amazing, almost unbelievable story giving us hope and showing a different insight into the fashion industry, in a world and time when everything is instantaneous, quick, fading. We talk to Louise Van Hauen, one of the founders, about how is it like to work with incarcerated women, how has this project improved their lives, and the newest prison they’ve started to work with in Thailand – where they produced the most recent collection, shown during Copenhagen Fashion Week, made of silk.