A social entrepreneurship model to safeguard traditional textile handicrafts and empower the local artisan community.

The project models an ethical production process that provides guidance and support in nurturing and maintaining fading traditional textile handicrafts such as embroidery, weaving, lacemaking from the Podravina area, Croatia. It empowers and encourages slow, manual work over the fast, mechanical while proposing handicraft as a strategy to achieve re-value in fashion objects and strengthening the product user-relationship. My role as the designer is to act as a facilitator in modeling sustainable enterprises in rural artisan communities while respecting the region‘s natural and cultural resources. The project aims to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity, old and new, youth and seniority resulting in unique, handcrafted fashion objects conveying the story of rooted time, place, community, culture, and identity.