CARCEL

In 2016 - 2021 I co-founded CARCEL. After visiting a women’s prison and understanding the consequences of being locked away and unable to support their families, we began two workshops inside Cusco’s women’s prison in Peru and Chiang Mai women’s prison in Thailand. Common for both places was the ambition to create ethical, fair and transparent working conditions for all women based on living wages, as well as educational opportunities allowing for skills creation and developing new labour rights aligned with the Nelson Mandela Rules. The purpose was to create opportunities for incarcerated women to provide for their families, sustain themselves as well as save up for post release and gain skills. It was nothing less than a dream to collaborate with these women. Together, we made a brand that travelled the world and set new standards for incarcerated people’s working rights, ideas for slow fashion, non-seasonal, natural materials only, and each piece had the name of the woman who made it. We opened Copenhagen Fashion Week with an activistic show without clothes to address the issue of seasonality, won the largest Design competition in Denmark and were featured in the global press. We didn’t survive the COVID lock-down and had to shut down in 2021. Nonetheless, these friendships and stories will always be in my heart. The brand was since continued with a new owner with a different direction and purpose.

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