Refugee tailors stitch a new life in Italy
Sewing Cooperative works with 5 migrants to make dresses on commission for clients
An American costume maker living in Rome has created a dressmaking cooperative around migrant and refugee tailors, an example of initiatives cropping up in Italy to help new arrivals assimilate and make a living while they wait for decisions on their asylum requests.
Lydia Witt, 35, said she was inspired to open the Sewing Cooperative while volunteering at refugee centres, where she met many people who had worked as tailors in their home countries. She said one strong motivation was to challenge misconceptions on refugee resettlement in Europe, while helping skilled refugees get jobs and create dialogue with local residents. Before moving to Rome, Witt worked for a decade as a dressmaker for the New York City Ballet and Broadway productions.
The Sewing Cooperative — currently hosted by the Sala Uno centre for contemporary arts — works with five migrants, mostly from West Africa, to make dresses on commission for clients. They use mostly colourful fabrics and create clothing according to their customers’ requests, basing the shapes on a “look book.” The pieces cost anything between 45 and 120 euros (between Dh187 and Dh503; $51 and $137).
Similar tailoring initiatives involving migrants and refugees have emerged in recent years, such as Florence-based “Crune Lab,” and multicultural clothing brand Waxmore, which launched a campaign last year to fund a training course for four asylum-seeking tailors.
Witt said she wants to show that migrants arrive in Europe with “gifts and talents they’re ready to use. It’s more about creating opportunities and opening doors,” she said.