. I felt supported. And luxury was changing. People were buying up and selling brands, coming and going. And I got to do all the things under the umbrella of marketing at that level, from strategy to PR. We grew countries and departments. We expanded the team and the advertising. Then, obviously, we grew digital, because it didn't exist. It was a time when luxury did not believe it belonged on the internet. But they let us do it.
We went on literally an impossible mission — it was the most complicated trip ever. Years before, my grandmother died, and I didn't go to her funeral because I didn't have the wherewithal to say, 'I have to go to Ghana.' I just didn't feel empowered enough to explain myself... Also, I couldn't afford it. It was a huge regret. A year later, my dad had a stroke. That was the moment I grew up in the sense of realizing... that life can be here and life can be gone.
That's where this thing was born, but that's not when I quit. I went back and I did what most people do: nothing. I sat at my desk and thought a lot. Kering has a foundation for women's rights and they had emailed me and said, 'Do you want to mentor this organization in Uganda?' And I was like, 'Yes, this is a calling, I've got to go.' I went and met this organization called. It was so beautiful because it was locally-sourced, locally-made...
Where sustainability takes a big leap here is: We're building for a hundred years from now. Most people look at the next five minutes, we're thinking about the long-term. The whole concept of— it's not good enough, to just throw money at somebody and say, 'Oh, ten percent of sales go back to this organization.' It's gotta be a lot more than that. Ghana, we have all these natural resources.
The Fall 2021 collection started by weaving fabrics with communities in Burkina Faso. I wasn't there because it was during the pandemic, but it was two different communities fully involved in this process. I briefed them like I would have briefed anybody else. The idea is for people to have the same targets, so we all share common targets and we're all treated the same. They made these fabrics, they spun them, they wove them — all the intricate steps of making original fabrics.
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