Fashion manufacturers in prison
The search for products and materials that are attentive to the environment and workers' rights, the enhancement and recovery of native artisan traditions, the interest in varied types of savoir-faire have imposed, even in the field of fashion, interests and styles of behavior that can be traced back to the principles of sustainability and responsibility. In this context, attention to the more exquisitely human dimension leads to a turn of attention to marginalized contexts such as prisons. In these experiences, creative work seems to be expressed not only as aesthetic and design research but also as a form of inclusion and human and cultural redemption. These are entrepreneurial realities often grappling with problems of economic sustainability and in difficult balance in a very competitive market, but also custodians of singular social demands combined with interesting product innovations.
A research started in 2004, funded by the Ministry of Research and University (PRIN Project 2004[1]), has explored the existence of new forms of responsibility in the textile-clothing sector, in which solidarity takes diversified forms ranging from allocating part of the profits to social projects to joint-ventures between cooperatives in the South and designers in the North of the world; from productions that are the result of the work and creativity of socially disadvantaged people to garments made with organic materials. Through a series of case studies and interviews with restricted workers and cooperative managers, for the first time a prison brand - I Gatti Galeotti - was analyzed, from a socio-cultural perspective, the result of the joint work of two cooperatives active in the San Vittore prison in Milan: Alice and Ecolab. The research then converged in the publication of the text "The fashion of responsibility"[2] .
In 2008, thanks to funding from the ModaCult center, this trend continued by studying a larger sample of prison social cooperatives active in the textile-clothing sector. With a series of qualitative methods, the social cooperative Officina creativa, active in the prisons of Lecce and Trani and creator of the "Made in prison " brand , and the evolution of the Milanese cooperative Alice, which in the meantime, in addition to having opened new laboratories in other neighboring penitentiary institutions (Bollate and Opera), has also given life to another brand - Sartoria San Vittore. The results of the research were published in 2010 in the text "Creative evasioni"[3] and presented at some national and international conferences.
The combination of prison fashion was, in 2020/22, again at the center of a further investigation in the project Gross Internal Well-being (B.I.L) in the prison sector: New models of Regenerative Economy funded by the Con Il Sud Foundation. The project was developed in the prisons where the Officina creativa cooperative is present (Lecce, Trani, Taranto) with the aim of developing quantitative indicators to measure the social value produced by artisanal and creative working methods in difficult contexts. Social value refers to the sum of the well-being provided to the environment (through the reuse of discarded materials) and the restricted thanks to a path of human and professional growth, triggered by reintegration into the workplace.
The results of the first part of the project were published in 2021 in the article From GDP to Bil: is another condition possible? The Made in Prison model[4]. The final results are being published and were presented in Rome on 3/05/2023[5]
[1] PRIN 2004 (local project, Model B): Market action and cultures of responsibility. Emerging behaviors of critical consumption in the textile-clothing sector.
[2] Lunghi C. and Montagnini E., 2007, The Fashion of Responsibility, FrancoAngeli, Milan.
[3] Lunghi C., 2010, Creative evasioni. Manifatture di moda in carcere, FrancoAngeli, Milan.
[4] Ferrara M. and Lunghi C., 2021, From GDP to Bil: is another condition possible? The Made in Carcere model, «Giornale di storia», n. 38 (https://www.giornaledistoria.net/saggi/articoli/dal-pil-al-bil-unaltra-condizione-e-possibile-il-modello-di-made-in-carcere/)
[5] Lunghi C. and Rovati G. at the conference "Is another condition possible? Results of the feasibility study and analysis of the indicators of the BIL – Gross National Well-being", 3 May 2023, Conference Hall, Fondazione Con Il Sud
