All queens deserve a crown. Kiwia puts the day’s catch of colorful fabrics in a bag before we get into a new taxi and drive towards Kiwia’s drawing room. Four women sit there and cut, iron and sew recycled fabric into hairbands, which can also be used as belts. – I knew from my time at Vogue that women who can afford it pay a lot of money for niche products like a handkerchief from Louis Vuitton. But after a couple of years, cheap hair bands suddenly started arriving from Thailand, says Kiwia. It became clear that Kiwia’s business needed to use a story to stand out. Kiwia remembers how the group of women sat together in the sewing room and ate breakfast together one day. – Diana, who was then an intern, suddenly said: When I put on one of the hairbands, it feels like I’m putting on a crown. Maybe it should be our story,” says Kiwia, who herself lights up from what she tells. – I was already very impressed by the strong women, both those who worked with me in the sewing studio, and other women in this country. Many of them have been abandoned by their husbands, and still manage to feed perhaps five children, alone. In a way, they are all queens who lead the country on their own. And that’s how Anne Kiwia’s slogan came to be: Every queen deserves a crown. No to “junk clothes” Kiwia is aware that it will take more than recycled hair bands to change the entire fashion industry’s overproduction. In 2022, the EU launched a long-awaited textile strategy, which in the coming years is expected to result in at least 16 new legislative proposals, which will regulate textiles in Europe until 2030. Among other things, they will ensure that companies start producing higher quality clothing that will last a long time. Kiwia is also calling for regulations on the quality of clothes that are exported to African countries. – We cannot create new ones from too old or bad textiles that are ready to be tossed in the bin, she says. But she hopes that she can help inspire others to open their eyes to the value that lies in used clothes. – There is great potential in all used clothing. There is both strength and jobs in it. And we have succeeded in making fashion items, which we send back to where they came from. There is an interest in that, says Kiwia, as she walks over to a colorful world map that she has had painted on one wall in the sewing room. She uses that to show her employees in how many countries women wear the “crowns”, which they sew in Tanzania from recycled clothes.
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