Many women run into the same issue as Ngozi Okaro, founder of Custom Collaborative: off-the-rack clothes don’t fit. Inspired by her personal experience commissioning custom clothing, Okaro created the nonprofit in 2016. Custom Collaborative trains and mentors no- and low-income immigrant women to work in the fashion industry through three primary programs: a 15-week course and its associated business incubator, and developing cooperatively owned businesses.
In 2019, the organization started taking students on tours of the Brooklyn Museum as a source of inspiration. (Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams left such an impression on one cohort that its graduation pieces were directly inspired by the exhibition.) A partnership grew organically from conversations Okaro had with Museum staff while arranging these outings. Women participating in the collaborative’s programs now regularly have a table at the Museum’s pop-up markets, selling the clothes they have designed and created.
“The history of museums and art, and what is considered art, has always been exclusive,” says Veronica Jones, the collaborative’s Entrepreneurship Coach. “Coming through us, they get a sense that they are welcome.”
Almost all the collaborative’s participants are Black and Brown women. Due to environmental racism, their communities are the most impacted by everything from poor air quality (caused by industrial power plants) to higher temperatures (caused by a lack of trees). Landfills—often where clothes end up when they’re discarded—are nearly three times as likely to be located in communities of color.
For the collaborative, sustainability is “the start and end of everything,” as Okaro puts it. Everything it makes comes from repurposed and upcycled textiles, diverting them from landfills. The organization uses deadstock fabric that’s been rejected by companies both for teaching and for creating complete works.
Understanding the environmental impact of the fashion industry is at the program’s core. So is sustainability in the financial sense: that participants earn what they’re worth.
“It's really important for us to make sure that our participants are steeped in the environmental and human rights aspects of sustainability,” Okaro says. “But also that they are agents in their own communities.
So far, the collaborative has trained more than 10 cohorts of women. Some graduates have gone on to work at major companies such as Theory, applying what they learned by repurposing old garments using sustainable techniques. Others have started their own labels, creating everything from custom wedding dresses to bucket hats.
The collaborative continues to regularly organize student excursions to the Brooklyn Museum. For some participants, it’s their first time in any kind of museum space.
“Custom Collaborative is connecting low- and no-income and immigrant people to the canon of art through our intentional work of bringing them to museums,” Okaro says, “and reminding them that what they create and what their communities have created are sustainable and are artistic.”
