BagFest: Arm candy for the socially-aware fashionista

Portion of proceeds from sales will be invested in a development program.

KARACHI: Entrepreneur Ayesha Mustafa of Fashion Compassion returned to Karachi to showcase her successful Palestyle bag collection at Labels on Wednesday evening. Mustafa presented a limited collection of 20 exclusive bags in different colours at an exhibition titled BagFest.

“This is a special collection for Eid that is being exhibited at Labels only for a day. There are 20 bags, and each one is a unique piece on its own,” Mustafa told The Express Tribune. Made from genuine Italian leather, the collection consists stylish totes, wallets and clutches embellished with gold-plated calligraphy. The calligraphic monograms included taglines such as ‘magic of my eyes’, ‘women of power’, etc in Arabic. The collection overall is best suited for a night out.

One of the strengths of Fashion Compassion is that it incorporates fashion with social activism. Like most of its collections, this too had a charitable mission behind it. A percentage of the proceedings go to various community projects happening across the world. Mustafa highlights that currently her team is working on the Water Exchange Program for the Palestinian refugees of al Piqaa Camp. This camp is located in Amman, Jordan sheltering about 18,000 refugees that don’t have access to clean water. Through these bags, she is helping around 4,000 refugees and setting up three schools.

While there are a lot of clothing labels that do their bit in fulfilling corporate social responsibility, London-based Mustafa has mostly focused on accessories. “In London, I see people spend three times more on accessories than on clothes. People often return clothes but never accessories. It is a niche market so I am focusing more on hand bags for now.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2013.

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