Green People: Made for a Woman’s Eileen Akbaraly

The brand is racking up sustainability awards and seeking greater impact.

July 19, 2023, 12:01am

Eileen Akbaraly, founder, designer and chief executive officer of Made For A Woman, leaning against the back of a chair in her Madagascar factory. — Eileen Akbaraly, founder, designer and chief executive officer of Made for a Woman. Courtesy

The fashion world is rife with talented craftsmen, but women are indisputably the backbone of the trade.

Take for instance Eileen Akbaraly, founder, designer and chief executive officer of Made for a Woman, a women-led artisanal luxury firm powering collabs with Chloé and the like. Akbaraly describes her brand as colorful, authentic and empowering. Fashion thinks so, too, as she was recently named a finalist for the Italian fashion chamber’s The Bicester Collection Award for Emerging Designers.

For Akbaraly, the business is impact.

Eileen Akbaraly: As a child from a multicultural background (Italian and Indian) growing up in Madagascar — a country that is considered one of the last “Edens” on Earth, yet is one of the poorest nations in the world — was an eye-opening experience. I never truly understood why I came to be born in a family where the worries of basic survival, education and health care were not a part of my life; while around me other children like myself were living on the street.

Seeing the economic hardships faced by the people in Madagascar instilled in me the need to give back to society. I’ve always known that seizing every opportunity to help the people around me is my purpose — creating a social entrepreneurship was never an option for me.

The fashion industry holds so much power and ability to influence society. The world is waking up and consumers are demanding more from brands, but we still aren’t where we need to be as an industry. The goal of Made for a Woman is to show the industry that you can be profitable while still putting people and the environment first.

A bird's eye view of the colorful, raffia-filled factory of Made For A Woman. — The colorful, raffia-filled workplace for Made for a Woman.

WWD: What sustainability callouts does your brand have?

E.A.: Our impact strategy is based on the principles that make up the United Nations Women Empowerment Principles (which we signed in 2023) and Sustainable Development Goals, as well as on the World Fair Trade Organization — which allowed us to become WFTO-verified in 2022.

With over 350 artisans in our Madagascar atelier, most are women from disadvantaged backgrounds and we aim to center all of our actions and strategies around the artisan’s needs. We work with the local Ministry of Population and local grassroots organizations to reach women in at-risk environments and provide them with the necessary professional training and resources to welcome them to the atelier. On top of providing salaries that are above both minimum and local living wage, all artisans also have free access to health care, preventative care, medication, hygiene supplies, contraception and family planning. In 2022, we performed medical assessments with the help of a doctor who continues to work three times a week in our atelier to ensure the physical well-being of our artisans.

This year, we also hired a full-time social worker who is present every day in the atelier to focus on the mental health of our artisans. We also offer daily activities like art therapy sessions and dance classes. We want to ensure that the atelier is a place of learning, growing and self-expression. Ninety-eight percent of our artisans have no basic education, so it’s crucial to provide them with educational opportunities – including language courses, financial literacy classes and IT classes. We also offer entrepreneurship, leadership and advanced crochet classes so that they can continue to grow within the company and access management roles, while also building confidence, self love and personal development. For our artisans with children, we provide a child care area in the atelier with a full-time teacher for children of all ages. With increasing demand, we recently expanded to three teachers and a dedicated manager — with children now divided into groups based on age and development.

A care provider laughs in a circle of children at the factory of Made For A Woman. — Family care is essential to the business of Made for a Woman.

In addition to our WFTO verification, we work with Business Social Compliance Initiative-audited and Global Organic Textile Standard-certified suppliers for our raw materials. Our main raw material consists of raffia, which is fully biodegradable in less than 15 years. Our scrap raffia is never wasted — it is either upcycled to create our rainbow woven designs or donated to local NGOs [non-governmental organizations]. Our signature vibrant colors are made using azo-free pigments, and our softer hues are all made using organic colorants from coffee grounds and tea leaves. We also fight deforestation and offset our carbon footprint by planting 1 million trees every year. We’ve received recognition as a finalist for the Human Rights Award at the CNMI Sustainability Awards in 2022, Best Commitment to Sustainability by the Better World Forum in Cannes, the Green Night Award for Sustainability at Green Night in Switzerland 2020, amongst others.

WWD: What’s your focus for sale or distribution? What are your bestsellers?

E.A.: As a slow fashion brand with all of our products handmade with certified dyes and materials, our objective is to build upon our positioning in the luxury sector. In addition to online, you can currently find us in Rinascente Milano Piazza Duomo, across Modes boutiques in Italy and Paris, as well as select luxury resorts like Thanos Cyprus. Our spring 2023 Chloé collaboration can be found in Chloé boutiques worldwide and online.

Our current focus is on expanding our international reach through wholesale distribution in high-end department stores and select boutiques. [We are] using our business-to-consumer channel to create a stronger dialogue between the artisans and our clients. Each of our labels includes a QR code that links you to a portrait of the artisan who created each product and gives more insight into her story. Our objective with this is to create a strong platform in the long term where not only will our clients get to know our artisans, but will also better understand our price transparency and how their conscious purchasing is making an impact.

A look at the Made For A Woman x Chloé collaboration under construction. Here, workers assemble raffia bucket hats complete with delicate sundial patchwork designs. — A look at the Made For A Woman x Chloé collaboration under construction.

WWD: How are you thinking about the climate crisis?

E.A.: When it comes to environmental justice, our role as a company is not just to preserve and protect the biodiversity of our home country and the dire situation that Madagascar is currently in, but the planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss overall.

Deforestation is a concrete threat to Raphia [or raffia] forests, especially in Madagascar. We work closely with local partners to develop specific actions towards reforestation, environmental protection and impact reduction.

In addition to our products being handmade in our atelier with raw materials from local and certified suppliers, our reusable and recyclable packaging is entirely plastic-free and handmade using raban, which is a vegetable fiber derived from raffia. Our labels are handmade from a locally sourced traditional paper called Antaimoro and pressed with real flowers.

We believe in offering our customers and partners a completely transparent overview of each step of our process to promote accountability, equitability and sustainability throughout the entire production and sales chain.

WWD: What is your dream collaboration?

E.A.: It’s much too hard to pick just one — there are so many collaborations that I dream of doing. We had the honor of doing our first collaboration with Chloé this year, which was an absolute dream come true. Our shared dedication to reducing environmental footprint and ensuring positive social principals made it a perfect partnership that I’m excited to see grow.

Our hope is to continue to collaborate with luxury brands who share our vision when it comes to transparency, sustainability and ethics; merging together our craftsmanship and their heritage and creating one-of-a-kind pieces that continue to support and empower local artisans while also reducing environmental footprint across the industry.

Our overarching goal is to become the go-to company for raffia products worldwide, as well as a role model for sustainability and social impact, especially in developing countries; setting an example for the fashion industry as a whole and furthering development of our vision and impact.

WWD: A final word?

E.A.: When we invest in supporting the improvement and quality of life of others, everyone wins.