Couture with a human face from E. Africa

In spotlight. Consumer giants have been fried for underpaying under-age workers in their shoe and apparel factories in the developing world but Italian fashion maverick Simone Cipriani wants to change this state of affairs from Nairobi where similar-minded fashion houses are in business

“You can explore different designs and things, so hopefully they become more competitive. Because if everyone in the Masai market is selling exactly the same thing it doesn’t really work. But if they try different things, they’ve got a better chance”.

The organisation’s approach seems to be paying off. In a recent review of the project by the Fair Labour Association, more than 90 per cent of interviewees said they had learned new skills, made improvements to their homes, and increased their self-confidence as a result of employment with United Fashion.

Elizabeth Wanjiru in Waithaka is no exception. She now harbours ambitions to start her own tailoring business, and wants to pass on her new skills by teaching other women in her community how to sew.

Her colleague, Pauline Aluoch, has already applied her training to a small side venture where she mends ready-made clothes. She, too, appreciates the safe work environment fostered by United Fashion but says the casual nature of the work, which depends on irregular flow of international orders, is a financial concern.
“Sometimes you work for two weeks, then you have to wait for another three months before you are called back. So it would be better if you were working regularly. I’d like to work here if it was regular, because the money we get here is good,” says Aluoch.

But, she adds, her average daily wage of about Sh600 would not be enough if she was a single mother like Wanjiru.
“The pay is enough because I have a husband and we supplement each other’s income. I don’t depend on it.”

United Fashion says it pays from $5 to $12 US a day depending on skill level. But despite the best intentions of such initiatives, settling on a fair wage can be difficult according to Nairobi-based fashion designer Ann McCreath of the KikoRomeo fame.

“A lot of what is being exported to the West is not what I consider to be properly paid for,” she says. “The first question starts with what is fair? What is fair can be interpreted in different ways.”

Salary discrepancy
Fair or not, there is certainly a huge discrepancy between the remuneration Kenyans receive for their work and the price their products are sold for abroad. A Vivenne Westwood canvas bag made in Kenya through United Fashion, for example, sells for the equivalent of KShs32,000 in the United Kingdom.

Not all ethical fashion products are sold at such a premium – indeed, many are marketed to young, socially conscious consumers with relatively meagre incomes. And United Fashion insists that its mandate is not just to provide employment in the developing world. It also wants to change the developed world’s attitude towards consumption.

“I think what needs to be done is education of consumers,” says Chloe Muktai, who works for United Fashion’s Corporate Social Responsibility and Communications Department. “People don’t understand that when they buy a t-shirt that costs a dollar something is wrong. Something is just not possible.”
But while a growing sense of social responsibility on the fashion scene means job prospects for women like Wanjiru and Aluoch, Kenya’s fashion designers say they deserve some opportunities of their own.

Great expectations
“I would love to expand overseas but right now it’s kind of limited to friends who live and work there,” says Ogake Mochache, who works on a sustainable fashion project at the University of Nairobi and whose clothing line, Ogake, was launched in Kenya last year.

“We don’t really have the capacity to go international. So much more could be done to help people like me to get out there.”
That kind of support must be part of the ethical fashion industry’s mission, agrees McCreath, who moved to Kenya 20 years ago and runs an ethical fashion label called KikoRomeo.

“You’re going right down to the grassroots and you’re zooming [products] into the luxury market internationally. And you’ve missed out everybody else in the chain,” she says. “I’m just feeling like it’s because we haven’t managed to get our brands there that there’s a lack of money in the whole industry here. And then it becomes like you’re still waiting for the foreigner …but we shouldn’t have this mentality of having to be rescued.”