So there’s an amazing international project for women about to come out of Italy, and it needs your help. Yep, this is a crowd funder. Don’t stop reading yet.
Let’s start with the who: Marisa Borioni (of Marisa Borioni S.r.l.) is from Bracciano, Italy, where she currently has her own embroidery studio. Marisa’s entire life’s career has revolved around fashion, from modeling to producing to owning her own business and developing her own line. You might not know her name, but you definitely know her work, as her company does embroidery and fabric development for the big guys like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry and a whole lot more.
Her and her team in Bracciano love what they do, I’ve visited their studio in person and have witnessed their talent, passion, and crazy work ethic that us non-fashion industry mortals only see in the movies. It’s an awesome scene.
Now for the what: Marisa has traveled all around the world for her work, and every trip in every country brings her to meet women of varying backgrounds, cultures and walks of life. As the years have gone by, Marisa however, noticed that despite the immense differences in lifestyle, two things crossed cultures and could apply to all women.
The first was that women are hard workers and women want to work, they want to support their families, improve their communities, grow in their industries and create opportunities for the next generations. The second was that fashion, particularly embroidery, was always relevant, always an admired and an important tradition.
Marisa then had this business idea. She intends to hire women from all around the world to create pieces of embroidered fabrics using the traditional hand-made styles and techniques of their particular culture, ship the pieces to her in Italy, where at her studio she will develop a high end “global garment” which can be sold internationally. While Marisa believes in charity, she more firmly believes that creating paying, stable jobs with an opportunity to grow in the industry and connect and communicate with women of varying cultures is the best way she can change the world. Having seen embroidery styles from around the world, Marisa hopes to include as many countries as she can in the project — some examples first off would be Afghanistan, Morocco, Ukraine and Egypt. Like most start-up businesses, Marisa has the vision, the people, the motivation, but not so much the funds, so she has turned to crowd funding to help her get things moving.
Marisa’s first step must be to pay the women she hired for their pieces, and then to fund and market the production of the collaborative garment. So far she has a page for “Women’s Collection of the World” on Kickstarter and on RocketHub, but little publicity, so I thought there was something I could do about that. Have I ever steered you wrong? This is a project that should be important to travelers, as it will support women and the economies of the destinations we all dream of visiting, not to mention I know some of you will be first in line for that globally hand-embroidered garment.
(The image below is a close-up of a hand-made dress, I mean each of those little pieces were put in by hand.)
All photos via Marisa Borioni
Feel free to also check out Marisa on Facebook, Instagram and her newly made Twitter account to get to know her a little better!
