Carcel: the sustainable fashion brand giving opportunities to women in prisons

In August 2017,
Danish fashion CEO abd Founder Verónica D’Souza launched “Carcel”, a new fashion
label with a goal to combine social responsibility and sustainability. The
brand’s high-quality products are made exclusively by women in prison using
100 percent natural materials and disregarding traditional seasons in order
to sell all products and avoid waste.

Based in Copenhagen, the company began manufacturing garments made of
baby Alpaca wool in a prison located in Cusco, Peru. At the end of this
month, Carcel will be presenting a line of silk clothing made by women in a
prison in Chiang Mai, Thailand, its second production location.

Today the brand sells its products all over the world through its own
online platform, Net-a-Porter and Browns department store in London. Prices
of products range between 90 and 875 euros.

At the end of this month, Carcel will be presenting a line of silk
clothing made by women in a prison in Chiang Mai, Thailand, its second
production location.

FashionUnited was able to talk to D’Souza on the phone about the the
creation of her brand, and what her plans are for its future.

How did the idea of Carcel come about?

D’Souza, trained in sustainable business, said the idea came about when
she was living in Nairobi, Kenya, and working with women who lived in
poverty: “I was very curious about the reasons why women went to prison, so
I asked permission to visit a women’s prison and they let me. When I
arrived, I realized that the main reason that they were imprisoned had to
do with poverty, which led them to become prostitutes, to steal and to
traffic drugs. Many of them were also mothers from rural areas, with low
wages and low level education “.

When D’Souza saw those women sewing, knitting or making small handcrafts
just to pass the time in prison, without even having access to good
materials or having a space to market what they made, she considered it to
be a waste of resources and realized that the same thing was happening in
many parts of the world.

“I thought that places could be found where they could have access to the
most incredible natural materials in the world where they could also have
some traditional female products and combine them with places where high
levels of poverty were related to crime. This could result in beautiful
competitive products that could really help these women break away from
poverty, so that they could save, earn a fair wage and send money home for
their children so that they could have a better future.”

Peru, the first production centre

D’Souza said that she started by making a list of countries that had the
best materials in the world and the highest rates of
crimes committed by women living in poverty. “Peru was one of the main
places on my list for drug-trafficking issues and because they also have a
fantastic tradition of products made with alpaca.

I then contacted the president of the National Penitentiary Institute of
Peru (INPEC), we met, and he told me that they were interested in having
job opportunities for people in prison. I travelled across the country,
visiting different prisons, and we decided to start in Cusco. We installed
our own production centre there and we were the ones who had to learn
because we knew nothing about alpaca. Louise (Van Hauen), my partner and
designer, presented the first products and that’s how we started,” she
explained.

In addition to Peru, the label has opened a new production centre in
Chiang Mai prison, Thailand. “In each country, we have a production manager
who visits the centres every day and monitors the work done. The
differences are in the materials, which are unlike any others, so they are
produced in different ways. The cultures of both countries are also
different,” said D’Souza.

An innovative fashion proposal

In just one and a half years the label has grown exponentially. “Our
customers have changed; in the beginning they were mostly Scandinavians but
now we are taking orders from the United Kingdom, the United States,
Australia and Mexico…we are really expanding. 50 percent of our customers
are outside Europe,” said the founder of the firm.

D’Souza said they plan to continue working with women who are deprived
of their freedom, in order to make them more self-confident and break the
circle of poverty in which they are immersed. “I think that by creating
businesses that solve problems in the world, you can make money and find
solutions.”