Karen Walker's Kenyan Eyewear Collection
This is a collaboration between New Zealand designer Karen Walker and ITC's Ethical Fashion Initiative for her eyewear line.
New Zealand designer Karen Walker links up with ITC's Ethical Fashion Initiative — an organization that aims to promote fair and sustainable business between fashion brands and artisans in Africa and Haiti — to deliver a unique eyewear collection and lookbook. EFI partnered Walker with Kenyan artisans who crafted beautiful screen-printed pouches to accompany the Karen Walker Visible collection. The genius move here, though, was to feature all of those involved in the creation process as models for the eyewear campaign — "machinists, cutters, tailors, production managers and metal workers who have acquired or refined craft and management skills through the Ethical Fashion Initiative" are all part of it and the effort was really worth it: the result is astonishing.
Karen Walker's Facebook page states, "the campaign captures our innate optimism, our love of maximum impact in the images themselves and also directs attention to Kenya in a positive way. The images help to bring visibility to how fashion can be a vital vehicle out of poverty." The designs live within the realm of Walker's signature bold shades, boasting a retro feel and eccentric details. This time around, she strikes the hardest when combining creativity, ethical business and these raw visuals, photographed by Derek Henderson in Waithaka, Kenya. Scroll through our gallery above and get ready to purchase the collection which drops February 10. If you want to talk about it, tweet @okayafrica with #karenwalker.