DIARY OF A CLOTHESHORSE: The new Pinko Bag collection full of African charm Marina Spadafora and FD4 working together for Ethiopia

Pinko, the Italian lifestyle fashion brand, will unveil a new bag collection during Milan Fashion Week. Taking place at theGiangaleazzo Visconti art gallery in the heart of the city (Corso Monforte 23), the high-profile event will focus on introducing a new vision within fashion, whereaesthetics and ethics collide.

Pinko has always had a strong global vision, a unique tendency for catching on quickly to trends and values and bringing them to life within its stores worldwide, in the form of clothes and accessories.

In the 1990s the Pinko Bags were a huge success for the company, a source of pure fashion fun for a generation of women. Today’s version of the product, Pinko Bags for Ethiopia takes the original product to new heights, and infuses it with fresh ethical significance.

Pinko chairman Pietro Negra explains, “With our Pinko Bags for Ethiopia we want to relaunch one of our most iconic products. Yet most of all we want to create objects that spark emotion within the customer due to the craftsmanship that has gone into them. I think globalisation can play a valuable role in bringing prosperity to distant cultures, especially if we can use the interest and support of people in the West.”

Pinko invited Marina Spadafora, the pioneering Italian designer and Ethical Fashion Ambassadress, to create the bag collection with ‘awareness and renewal’ as the inspirational force behind each design. Spadafora stated, “Through this project I expressed my motto ‘fashion with a mission’ by reproducing the body painting signs and symbols of the tribes of the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia, on each bag.”

The Italian fashion designer continues, “Africa is our future, the local arts and crafts industry is a treasure chest of products in cooperation with nature. Pinko Bags for Ethiopia aims to help safeguard both.”

Pinko participates actively in Fashion for Development (F4D), a global awareness project that seeks to nurture economic growth and independence in Third World countries through the power of fashion. In full support of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, F4D devotes particular attention to women as cultural caretakers of artisan traditions.

The Pinko Bags for Ethiopia are made from 100% African cotton by an all-female team of workers in an eco-sustainable factory in Adis Abeba. “This is a totally viable business, with no element of charity,” Marina Spadafora assures. “Little by little the women will acquire economic independence, along with a new sense of respect in their society.”