Along with their intriguing beauty the scarves by Slow Factory carry a message for a peaceful world and a more sustainable way of living.
Slow Factory was founded by Céline Semaan Vernon on the day that the Curiosity rover landed on Mars. Semaan comes from Lebanon, a country dealing with chaos for a long time. In 1980, during the civil war, she and her family fled the country. On their travels from Beirut to Paris to Montreal the stars always guided them and by lack of a traditional home Semaan felt comforted by the constant presence of the stars.
‘Now that I’ve made a home in New York, the bright city lights make it harder to see the stars,’ Semaan explains the choice to depict satellite images of cities at night-time and other open data images of the earth and space on the scarves.
The designs are meant to create a new kind of luxury: the timeless and the temporary of life on earth come together in sustainable essentials that are built to last. The items are handcrafted in Italy and New York in a sustainable way.
Slow Factory claims that Fair Trade only is not enough for them. Part of the yield of each scarf goes to the Dignity Fund that provides women refugees in the Middle East with Dignity Kits containing hygiene supplies, clothing and medicines.
The Cities by Night collection of scarfs show cities glowing at night as seen from the international space station. Apart from their beauty, that make the items absolute wannahaves, these images make you wonder about the necessity and the pollution of all that light.
The scarf showing Gaza by night has an additional message written over the image: ‘Peace!’. And that is a clear message to start off Christmas.
We take a short Christmas break and will be back on 5 January.