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By Michaela Cabrera
PARIS (Reuters) From old denim fabric, Afghan refugee Bagher Husseini makes baggy jeans with frilled patches that he hopes to be paraded down French catwalks later this year.
Husseini had worked with sewing machines before. He went to Iran after fleeing fighting in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, surviving on a modest tailor’s income.
Now she is involved in collaborations between French fashion students and migrants from Afghanistan and the Middle East. The Reprise project aims to train migrants in the skills of turning used clothes into edgy menswear.
“I love choosing different colors, different types of fabric and then making something special out of them,” Husseini said in his native Dari.
New to his repertoire are jeans, jackets and hats, sometimes inspired by traditional Afghan clothing.
Reprise evolved from a rudimentary sewing workshop.
The workshop is based in a center housing 200 asylum seekers in the southern suburbs of Paris.
Once or twice a week, a group of asylum seekers joins a workshop, honing new skills in embroidery, knitting, and modeling.
I love coming to models. Model and (play) cricket, says asylum seeker Imran Hazarbuz, who used to play cricket in his native Afghanistan. I don’t know which job is better for me, we’ll see.
Fashion students and social workers want to get professional sewing machines and fabrics from fashion brands. If they are able to speed up the pace of making apparel, the first collection could be marketed later this year.
The story is there, and the clothes breathe this story, says fashion student Hugo Castejon-Blanchard.
(Reporting by Michaela Cabrera; Editing by Richard Lough and Mike Collett-White)
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