Fashion: Colori Vivi - clothes handmade by migrant women

The Turin-based fashion startup "Colori Vivi" (Bright Colors) offers training and a job to migrant and Italian women. 

The atelier's spring-summer 2022 collection's clothes are made from fabrics donated by major international fashion houses.

The fashion brand Colori Vivi (Bright Colors) is offering a special collection for spring-summer 2022. The Turin-based startup is reportedly offering training and a job to young Italian and migrant women.

Barbara Spezini, the CEO of the social enterprise, said on Thursday (April 21) that the atelier's creations have as a central theme the "concept of beauty and diversity, for example in the past we aimed to enhance curvy women or asymmetries."

The spring-summer 2022 collection, designed by Alessandra Montanaro, was made with recycled "top quality fabrics coming from donations made by major international Maisons and by local companies specialized in premium products".

Foreign women from six countries

The atelier has hired seven women, including two Italians, while an additional four women work as trainees thanks to a program funded by the municipality of Turin. 

The other employees and trainees hail from six countries: Afghanistan, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia.

"We offer to these women an occasion to make it", she said. Central to the brand are the concept of "integration and autonomy, self-determination and dignity."

"We invest in social cohesion and in reducing the environmental impact" of fashion, stressed Spezini. "Quality is very high and there is great care in the details," she noted.

The atelier is planning on hiring three additional workers: "A high-level cosmetics company has asked us for a beauty case and it has now made an order to produce 5,000 pieces."

Clients include sports associations and handbag companies, she said. "We are interested in e-commerce as well as word-of-mouth" to promote growth, added Spezini. Clients buying the brand's clothes range in age "between 20 and 70".

Customers are typically women who "try to become protagonists of change" and who "choose comfortable, soft clothes" made from "high-quality fabrics," said the CEO.

"It is possible to choose the fabric for a shirt or skirt, which makes garments exclusive," she concluded.