Francoise Olivas: Creating a Women’s World of Fashion

Weaving sustainability, fair trade and empowerment

Foreign Relations: “My parents always thought I’d be a diplomat or a designer,” says Olivas, who was born in El Paso, TX and raised in Washington DC. “My mother would send baby formula and diapers across the Rio Grande. We always volunteered and were very political.” It was at a women’s rights march in 2003 that Olivas met representatives from West Africa and Guatemala and shared her idea for a fashion line. “They said that whenever I wanted to come to their countries, to just call,” says Olivas. She waited a couple of years to make a go of it, instead bulking up on classes at FIT and working for Kate Spade and Nanette Lepore.

Crossing Borders: After one particularly grueling Fashion Week, Olivas embarked on a pilgrimage to Guatemala. “I called a group in Denver that gave micro-loans,” says Olivas. “I told them my spiel and they told me to get on a boat to Santiago, walk up a hill and ask anyone you see for Candace.” Olivas miraculously found her way to Candace and a group of female village embroiderers that she now works with. “I’ve done a lot of color combinations with them,” she says. Through NGOs, Olivas has also found women in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan to work on her line. “In Cambodia they pulled women out of prostitution to be silk weavers,” she says. “Somewhere in this crazy world, I’m helping another woman.”

Piece Work: Olivas only uses GOTS-certified organic materials and works with low impact dyers and finishers. One blue madras plaid dress for spring 2010, dubbed the Dumbarton, is an organic cotton hand painted print using plant and vegetable dyes. A friend from Ghana does the dyeing in New York. A blue and white striped dress is trimmed with lace from Sri Lanka, created by a group of wives who came together after experiencing heartache in the 2004 tsunami. Women in Guatemala hand-weave belts of organic yarn in primitive jacquard patterns, while in the Yucatan, they crochet. Afghanistan villagers create beautiful hand embroidery for the collection.

Fare Trade: “I started playing with Indigo dyes and turned my bathroom blue,” says Olivas, in her quest for fresh textiles. For spring 2010 she uses pea silk from India as a delicate trim on a skirt. “They let caterpillars just do their thing,” she says. Olivas is also trying to incorporate U.S. mills for earthy, natural cottons. Her current mill ties are in Japan, Italy and Austria. The collection is sewn entirely in the U.S

Treaty Signing: The road to making fair trade garments a viable business has been a challenge during a price-sensitive economic downturn. While Olivas saw interest in her line from Anthropologie, it was deemed too expensive, Olivas says, with $250-$300 retail price points for dresses. “I can see this in Barney’s or Bergdorf (Goodman),” she says. “But I also need a long-term re-evaluation. Do I try to teach women in Cambodia to sew and make patterns? Or China? Not everything in China is awful. It’s about finding that compromise. l

http://www.francoiseolivas.com

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