The Hills Are Alive

Amsterdam-based Zazi Vintage creates coats worth top-drawer status. But more than its fine-wool clothes, it is the label’s intentional collaborations with over 1,100 artisans from all corners of the world that is a study in cultural sustainability, says BANDANA TEWARI

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories...water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom” — CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES, AUTHOR, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

THIS IS A story about a global interwoven sisterhood that tirelessly supports small, home-grown, culturally vibrant, handcrafted enterprises led by women, who collectively call upon the divine feminine to co-create and coexist in harmony with Pacha Mama.

Yes, this is not the typical fashion language.

Zazi Vintage, a symbol of a wave of creative collectives across the world, is a beacon of sacred creativity and upholders of cultural sustainability.

Culture is the fourth pillar of sustainable development, a concept developed under the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Zazi Vintage, a clothing and accessories brand is a perfect example of what happens when craftspeople and culturally-attuned entrepreneurs come together: the very vocabulary of business changes. From consumerist tropes of faceless production, invisible hands, mass production, excess inventory and wastefulness, the ethics of creativity emerge: intentional co-creation, cultural appreciation not appropriation), equal participation, partner families, respect for diversity.

Serendipitously, the gems of wisdom in a profound book written in 1973 called Small Is Beautiful: A Study Of Economics As If People Mattered by the luminary German economist EF Schumacher, points to the ethics of Zazi Vintage, a 2016 creative enterprise based out of Amsterdam.