Follow our travel to South India, Tiruppur.

First-year students of the MBO level 4 program International Business and Fashion go to India for the NWA funded project Localizing Global Garment Biographies. Follow them!

On Friday, January 27, two students from the Business and Fashion program will travel to India. Alissety Hirschfeld and Larisa Manzueta Ramirez are visiting southern India together with their Art & Design teacher Jose Makor. It is not a tourist location that they will visit, but a part of India where our T-shirts are produced from regenerative organic cotton.

The NWA funded project connects to and encompasses a cross-curricular project of Zadkine, coined ‘Freedom’, which was started earlier this academic year by two B&F classes. Led by Maria Teresa Snelders, the students viewed their own sense of freedom or the lack of freedom from the socio-economic dimension of the Citizenship course! Freedom, and the lack thereof, has many different dimensions, which include the continuing repercussions of slavery in the colonial era, as well as the unfree labour that is unfortunately currently common in the garment industry in Asia. 

Classes focused on the abolition of slavery (150 years ago this year), and visited Museum Rotterdam ’40-’45 together with, among others, Erwin van Franeker. We have also connected to TU Delft (dr. Rachel Lee) and Leiden University (dr. Erik de Maaker). The latter is a faculty at the Department of Ciultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, and asked us to join an NWA funded project called Localizing Global Garment Biography. This project also involves Raddis Cotton in India. We do research into the story behind the clothing viewed from different cultures.

Later, the students were invited to the depot of the Museum Rotterdam, which is very special in itself. Here, various garments were viewed that had something to do with the theme of freedom and various workshops, including the folding of an Afro-Surinamese Angisa.

The students worked in pairs and made a choice from clothing and accessories that have a link with Freedom, in the broadest sense of the word. The chosen item of clothing formed the basis for a self-designed mini collection, with a T-shirt as a mandatory component. This was designed for the course Fashion and Art & Design. After pitching their design, one duo emerged as the winner.

What are they going to do in India?

They will visit cotton growers and other parties from the fashion supply chain. They will also connect to students from an educational programme similar to theirs, and engage in a process of co-design. The emphasis is on sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

Raddis Cotton is a company that, together with partners in India, is working to make the production of clothing a lot 'cleaner' and more humane. For example, by using organic cotton and also improving the conditions in the workshops for the employees.

The students aim to make a prototype of their design while in India. Eventually, about 400 pieces of the T-shirt will be produced and the students will be given the assignment, in year 2, to market and sell them.

The story behind the garment (Localizing, Global, Garment, Biography), the people who play a role in it and what it does to people around the world are the main goals of the project. The whole process will be documented on video. In the run-up to the trip and during the trip, the students can be followed via https://flip.com/f94b6c36

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