|
Bibi Russell
When Bibi Russell gave up her career as a top model eleven years ago and returned to her home in Bangladesh, she had a dream: She wanted to save the centuries-old tradition of hand weaving from dying out. Despite many setbacks, she has succeeded in making the hand-woven textiles of the Bengali weavers into an export article much in demand. She designs her own fashion collections from the high-quality materials (raw silk, cotton and linen) and these are now available in several European countries, in Germany since 2003.
Bibi Russell left Bangladesh in 1972. She was 18 and travelled to London to apply for a place at the famous London College of Fashion. The chances were not good for a young woman from a former British colony who had had no training. But she succeeded nevertheless, and she became the first woman from Bangladesh to study at that British college which has formed so many fashion talents.
In order to earn money, she did jobs as a dresser at fashion shows. There she was discovered and began with a fashion report in Harper's Bazaar. That was the start of a great career as a fashion model: She was the star on the catwalks of Paris, Milan and New York, worked for Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent and in the eighties she presented collections from Armani, Mussoni and Ferrés with Iman and Jerry Hall.
When she gave up her career as a model in 1994, she returned to her home country. Instead of living a carefree, privileged life in Europe, Bibi Russell wanted to make use of her knowledge as a designer and her excellent contacts to textile traders and fashion buyers to provide support for the weavers in Bangladesh so that they can keep up their traditional craft. She also wanted to provide new impulses to place the textiles on the international market too.
This was by no means easy: When she first visited the villages, she found little interest in her ideas. The weavers were sceptical, thought she was a politician who made promises because there was an election campaign. Today Bibi Russell is revered by millions of Bangladeshis.
Fashion for Development
From her international experience Bibi Russell knew that the quality of the hand-woven textiles from Bangladesh had always been extraordinarily high. So she travelled throughout the country and spent years of steady work developing new textiles, patterns, qualities and ecological production procedures together with the weavers. Bibi Russell lays the emphasis on intensive, radiant and expressive designs that are based on the traditions of her home country of Bangladesh but are created with a Western public in mind. However, the fashion designer does not just copy the trend designs from us, but relies on a touch of the exotic to achieve the characteristics so recognisable in her collection. The traditional patterns and motifs of her home country are the source of her inspiration and the foundation for her high-quality collections.
Even if Haute Couture attracts her as "artistic", Bibi Russell is determined to stay with affordable fashions and is not too fine to produce for French mail order catalogues too. Some of her summer dresses were ordered 10,000 at a time. "I prefer to sell 1000 garments for 80 dollars than 100 for 1000 dollars", she says. It is the quantity which is so important: It means work for the weavers. Bibi Russell is not only concerned about creating the foundation for a material existence for the weavers and their families, the creation of more self-confidence and the rediscovery of their own values are of great importance. Sometimes she takes some of the weavers to Dhaka to show them that their work is part of the cultural treasure of their country.
The company "Bibi Productions"
In 1996 she founded the company "Bibi Productions" in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
This is where her first collection was made, which she presented in Paris under the patronage of the UNESCO in 1996: An explosion of colours right in the middle of the grey-black minimalism of those years. The UNESCO honoured her work and declared her one of their ambassadors.
When Bibi Russell was invited to open the Fashion Week in London with her collection in 1998, she appeared to have broken through into the international market. While the preparations for the Fashion Show were at their peak in London, news reached her that Bangladesh was suffering one of the worst floods in its history. Of the approx. 120 million inhabitants, around 20 percent had become homeless. This was a gigantic catastrophe which affected almost all the weavers working for Bibi Russell. Their hand-woven silk materials were rotting in the floodwaters.
The designs that Bibi had presented in London so successfully could not now be produced. This was a severe setback, not only from economic standpoints. Instead of the large orders she had hoped for, she was faced with the possible fears of the Europeans that business with developing countries could be too risky due to the incalculable nature of environmental influences and political conditions making business partners unreliable.
After the flood disaster, Bibi Russell had to start at the beginning again. Instead of helping the weavers from almost all the regions of her country to achieve the breakthrough into the international market, she had to put her money into saving her highly specialised suppliers. It simply was not enough, so she founded the charity "Save the Weavers" which has been collecting donations since then to relieve the situation of the weavers and keep the traditional craft alive.
It took one and a half years until the business got off the ground again. She has achieved her dream of making hand-woven textiles from Bangladesh into a desirable export article providing work and income for thousands in her home country despite all the difficulties. The textiles produced by Bengali handweavers today are suitable for European Haute Couture or for covering Italian designer furniture. She sells her textiles and her own collections in England, Spain and France.
As a fashion designer, Bibi Russell is one of the most significant earners of foreign exchange in her country today. For the last 10 years, her collection has been produced exclusively in Bangladesh and this has created jobs in one of the poorest countries of the world - and not only for seamstresses.
Her creative talent and her social work have led various awards to the fashion designer, such as the "Freedom Award" and the United Nations Peace Prize. With the presentation and the sale of her designs in Paris, London or Düsseldorf she provides around 100,000 Bangladeshis with work, self-esteem and a perspective for the future.
With the reactions to her work, she has opened the eyes of the government to the huge potential of creativity and jobs that this support of the weavers has released. The key to the development of Bangladesh lies in the strengthening of the village economy, the traditional craft of the weavers, on which alone at least five million people depend.
If the government of Bangladesh is to prevent this additional poverty, it must lay more emphasis on quality in the growth of textile production, the most important export trade of the country. High-quality textiles make production and export more efficient. Bibi Russell and the Bengali hand weavers have shown how successful this concept can be in a very impressive manner. |
