The 2018 AFIELD mentorship was awarded to Kim Hou and Paul Boulenger for About A Worker (AAW), an initiative which rethinks the fashion system by producing the designs of workers expressing their own vision of the industry.

The brand therefore casts some light on the invisible creators and unheard stories of the fashion world, while promoting responsible craftmaking of local laboratories and factories. ¹

For the first collection, AAW cooperated with Mode Estime, a clothing factory located in Saint-Denis (Paris) and hosting 14 workers with fixed-term contracts. Amongst them, Fadila Boubekeur, Aissatou Gakou, Kira Ghoul and Misbahou Yssouf all took part in a 6 months initiation to design based on the classical process of creating a collection, from the moodboard to the end product. ²

About A Worker ’s fashion collections do not follow seasons but the countries where the production takes place. It has the ambition to travel where fashion has deep social, economic and environmental impacts. By collaborating with workers from different parts of the globe, About A Worker is also eager to take-part in a knowledge-sharing, learning from the experience of people they meet. ³

One of the goals the brand wishes to achieve through the AFIELD mentorship programme is to produce a new collection in collaboration with the women of the Shipibo-Conibo Peruvian community with whom mentor and 2015 fellow Alejandra Ballon-Gutiérrez has been working for several years. In doing so, About A Worker will both learn and give visibility to their local and traditional weaving technique called Kené.

For more information, please visit the website of the project aboutaworker.com and follow their activity on Instagram and Facebook.