Stella Jean has just presented her own limited edition capsule collection made for Oxfam and Coin at the Coin Excelsior in Rome.

By buying the garments, you’ll support Right To Be Heard, a project within the Women’s Circle for Change, carried out by Oxfam in the border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, among the poorest of the Hispaniola island. The objective is to collect funds that will guarantee a decent income and better working opportunities to around 20’000 farmers, especially women. This will be accomplished by establishing small enterprises and offering them better access to social and healthcare services.

Jean is not new to this kind of initiatives, especially when it comes to La Perle des Antilles. Only four years have passed from the 2011 Vogue talent scouting project Who’s On Next? Yet, Stella feels like a seasoned stylist, very sensitive, on the first line when it comes to the social, ethical and sustainable role that fashion should embody.

In 2013 Stella started her partnership with Ethical Fashion, not a charity but an initiative connecting the fashion world with African and Haitian artisans, allowing these people who live at the border of society to put their precious skills at the fashion masters’ disposal. Since then, she went to Burkina Faso, Mali, Kenya and Ethiopia, where she worked with local artists to create textiles produced ethically, following the traditional working techniques.

“My collaboration with Oxfam and Coin is motivated by shared will and engagement, aimed at generating entrepreneurship and self-sustainment in local communities, in Haiti, demonstrating the driving power of women. The objective is to start a mechanism of independence to destroy the failing assistencialism. To me, it is fundamental to start acknowledging how real sustainability does not come with cargos, but it is born within every single village with proper organization and a new dignity conferred at a global level”, Stella says.

So we have a fresh collection, with an eye-catching rooster, symbol of good wishes and a recurring image in the Haitian naïf art. This is the fil rouge of this collection, made of a boxy shirt in stretch cotton and of a clutch in leather and tissue, both made in Italy. Completing the collection, we find a bangle in fer forgé embellished by colorful enamels, made artisanally by women of Haiti.

Read the interview with Stella Jean

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