By Gabrielle Kennedy / 26-11-2009

Moniek van Erven’s trajectory into the fashion world has been an unlikely and global expedition.  After graduating with a degree in economics and finance, which she found “dull and boring” she donned a backpack and set off for India.  When she returned to Holland, she had a fashion collection stuffed into supermarket bags, financial and strategic backing as well as a commitment to making a difference.

It all started when Van Erven, by chance, landed a job in micro-financing with the Mann Deshi bank in Mhaswad, a small village in the south of India.  The position focused on providing incubation, marketing and legal advice to mostly widowed women who had entrepreneurial ideas, but lacked education and the necessary infrastructure to set up shop.

“But there was nothing to do in the village,” Van Erven laments.  “There were no cafes, or hotels.  Nothing but pigs in the street.”  To get by, she got acquainted with some local women whom she spent evenings and weekends with drinking tea and gossiping.

“Their stories were amazing,” Van Erven continues.  “Forced marriages, poverty, abusive husbands, alcoholism and early widowhood.  The one thing that came up time and again though was how these women wanted something different for their own daughters.  They wanted them educated, in law school, and out there fighting for women's rights.”

What also came up a lot was that many of the women had basic sewing skills and had made their own saris.  The circle lying in the center of the Indian flag represents a spinning wheel – Gandhi’s message to the people that by weaving their own fabric, called khadi, and sewing their own clothes, they could help to sever Britain's colonial stranglehold.  It’s a philosophy that has stuck and still today many women are adept with a needle and thread.

Spotting an opportunity, Van Erven started talking to the women about somehow fusing the world of micro-financing, their sewing skills, Gandhi’s legacy and the exquisite local Indian fabrics.  “It’s so inspiring,” she says.  “When you go to India something just grabs you and it doesn't let go.  The fabrics, the colours, the vibrancy of it all.  Everything is so poor, but somehow so alive.  Even the most destitute women in the Bombay slums look beautiful – they wear jewellery and makeup and colourful clothes.  It’s so different to here in Holland where the women mostly dress like men.”

So with no fashion skills of her own beyond the ability to finish simple seams and hems, Van Erven set to work.  She drew sketches and helped the women to understand how their traditional clothes could be manipulated to fit western styles and tastes. Together they came up with a collection on paper, but with only one computer in Mhaswad, sourcing and ordering fabrics was not going to be possible.  They were going to need to travel overnight to a city.   

“But that was so much more of an ordeal than I expected,” Van Erven says.  “These girls were forbidden from talking to men and had never left their village.  They were scared stiff, only looked down and never spoke.  They felt worthless in the city and acted like they were just simple farming girls even though alone and behind closed doors they were smart and talkative and full of ideas.  It took a lot to get the families to trust me and even when we eventually set off for the trip, the girls' mobile phones rang every fifteen minutes. Their grandparents, aunts and brothers constantly called.  It was the most bizarre thing.”

This first part of Van Erven’s adventure was entirely funded by herself.  Her grandmother had recently passed away and left her a small inheritance, which she used to fund the traveling, and buy the fabrics.  At times she worried that it was all for nothing and that the whole idea was a complete disaster.  “The first pieces looked like garbage bags,” she says.  “That’s when I really started to reconsider.”

But by the end of six weeks they had a collection of thirty items, which Van Erven piled into Albert Heijn supermarket bags and brought back to Holland.  “Still then people at the bank I was working at were laughing at me,” she says.  “They were saying there was no way it could work.  I had no importing plans, no retailers, and no business know-how or skills.”

Unperturbed she raced around Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam with her pieces and her story.  “People loved the tale, but when they started to ask questions, I realized it wasn’t going to work. I have a degree in economics and I know about creating legal entities and formulating business models … but I had nothing.  I had forgotten about that whole side.  People asked for a website, for information about who I worked for and I just had no answers.”

Van Erven ended up accepting a job in finance to survive, but spent every spare hour at her desk determined to make her Indian dream a reality.  She pulled in graphic designers, web designers, and started to talk to local industry.  She registered as a foundation, choosing to call her outfit Satara, which means Seven Hills and refers to the area where Mhaswad is located.  And by then it was summer in Amsterdam and via people she had met along the way, she managed to set up shop at the beach in Blijburg, which was overrun by sun-loving Dutchies who responded well to the clothes.

Meanwhile, the seamstresses back in Mhaswad were sending more garments and the gossip on the lanes was that this crazy foreigner who had ingratiated herself with the locals and set up a fashion company was actually doing OK.  Money was starting to come in.  Van Erven’s former employer, the Mann Deshi bank, contacted her to say that they had been wrong and would like to become her official local partner.  “They offered to support me,” she says, still overwhelmed by how in the last few months everything has fallen into place.  

It was a pivotal step.  The bank offered its assistance because what Van Erven was doing was offering entrepreneurial assistance to locals.  Hivos, a Dutch development organization, also offered financial support as did the Triodos Foundation.

The next step for Van Erven was a chance meeting with the Head of Fashion at Amfi, Leslie Holden.  “He loved my story and the school was doing a big India event so I thought we could collaborate,” she says.  “But when he actually saw the clothes his reaction was not so enthusiastic.  He said something like, ‘None of these garments are what can be called fashion!’”

With extraordinary resilience, Van Erven took the criticism and decided to act.  She started to understand that to make Satara work, she was going to need to work with real fashion designers.  She approached some of the biggest names in the Dutch fashion industry, but after a while felt that it wasn’t the right direction.  “It was supposed to be all about empowering women in need so getting a famous person to add his or her credibility to our line just didn’t feel right,” she says.  “I wanted it to be really mutual.  Where people needed this to grow and could benefit.”

So Van Erven went back and spoke to Leslie Holden at Amfi.  Her proposal this time was that he’d come up with the design students and she’d come up with everything else.

Back in India things were also starting to move.  The bank wanted to expand the project to fifteen seamstresses and they wanted to provide real training for them, not just the amateurish guidance the first group got.  But in Mhaswad there was not enough electricity for industrial sewing machines so a studio in Hubli near Goa was selected, and more local women chosen to participate.

“The project was suddenly a huge undertaking and it was going to take a lot of time for Amfi to get organized and on board,” Van Ervan says.  “So instead, Leslie suggested we work with graduates.”

Three designers were quickly selected and left for India straight away with instructions to train the fifteen seamstresses and design the spring/summer 2010 collection.

Sounds simple enough: “But by the time I got there you had Indians in one corner, designers in another, no common language and a really strained atmosphere,” says Van Erven.  “The first step was getting the seamstresses onto the machines, but it turned out that they were much more powerful than even the graduates were used to.  It took a whole week to get everyone sewing a simple straight line.”

Panic permeated, but everyone persevered until eight weeks later the three young desigers - Lotte Biermasz, Tuija Mantyla and Sofie Claes - had worked hard to train the Indians and put together a collection.  And despite what this extraordinary story might suggest, the line is nothing like the usual offering of Indian inspired beach looks.  Everything is under wraps until the official release in January 2010, but from what design.nl has seen, it is an edgy collection of beautiful and whimsical separates.  The silhouettes discreetly celebrate femininity and are presented in a delicately muted palette that marries the colours of India with the more subtle demands of the European market.   

When the VU University heard about the Satara project a few months ago, it offered to provide business interns.  And for the next collection, more seamstresses are being added to the team to be trained by the next batch of graduate designers to be sent from Amfi, which is now a full partner.

“Amfi will send two designers twice a year as well as two production managers to oversee collections,” says Van Erven.  “And in Holland, branding students will work on positioning the product and doing the marketing.  This is all thanks to Leslie, of course.”

But most importantly, the Indian seamstresses are being trained, making more money than ever before and their daughters have the real chance of accessing an education.  "It is what it is really all about," says a clearly proud Van Erven.  "Their confidence has increased, they are crawling out of poverty and best of all they have these infectious smiles dominating their faces.  It has been an incredible thing to witness."


Images: Moniek van Erven with the Indian seamstresses, the Indin flag.  All images (except the flag) by Tom Palmaers.

(Satara has recently been awarded the Millennium Award for contributions to achieving UN Millennium Development Goals and the Re-Shape Award for the best social initiative contributing towards the UN goals on development.)

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