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What’s the pinnacle of luxury? For many, the answer is high-quality craftsmanship. But too often, the people behind some of those coveted artisanal techniques face poor working conditions, low pay and abuses of their basic human rights. How can luxury better support artisans and provide genuine social impact for these often vulnerable communities?
That’s the question driving Eileen Akbaraly, founder and CEO of Madagascar-based fashion brand Made For A Woman, which creates artisanal raffia handbags and accessories and has collaborated with Fendi and Chloé.
Growing up, Akbaraly was acutely aware of the concentration of power within Madagascar: she has Italian and Indian heritage, and notes that Indians are a minority in Madagascar but control most of the economy, with particular influence in trade and in the textile sector. In contrast, the indigenous Malagasy population disproportionately lives under the poverty line, working in agriculture and low-paid jobs and lacking access to social mobility opportunities. “Growing up in a country where there’s so much contrast and injustice, I really felt that from a young age,” she says.
Her childhood was spent building schools, orphanages and hospitals with her mother, who works in social impact. Akbaraly left Madagascar at the age of 18 to study fashion business at Istituto Marangoni in Milan, before working in India at a couture brand, which opened her eyes to the contrast between high prices and poor factory conditions. She returned to Madagascar in 2019, discovering that a number of luxury brands source raffia from the country. Madagascar has been a primary source of raffia for centuries. Currently around 80 per cent of the world’s raffia comes from Madagascar, harvested from native raphia palm trees. Thus, Made For A Woman was born.
The brand employs and trains Malagasy artisans, treating them as recognisable partners rather than anonymous workers. It operates primarily as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) social enterprise, selling handcrafted raffia bags, hats and other accessories on a made-to-order basis (it also has a handful of wholesale partners including Moda Operandi, Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie and Printemps). Bestsellers include the Rainbow Craftsmanship collection of multicoloured one-of-a-kind hobo bags, retailing from $390 to $700.
Despite funding challenges, this year, the company has scaled from 350 to 750 artisans — primarily from vulnerable communities such as disabled individuals, sex workers, gender-based violence survivors and single mothers — who all earn fair wages and have access to healthcare, education, mental health support and childcare. At a time when luxury fashion is under scrutiny for worker exploitation and supply chain abuses, Made For A Woman offers a blueprint for human-first craftsmanship.
Creating social impact
There are a number of missteps brands make when working with artisans from vulnerable communities, but in Akbaraly’s view, they stem from brands prioritising the preservation of craftsmanship alone, rather than the communities behind it. Too often, narratives around artisans and craftsmanship centre either the past or the future, while overlooking the present realities, challenges and potential for positive impact. Akbaraly aims to put the people and their quality of life first: Made For A Woman recently developed a primary school, shelter and an onsite mental health facility for these artisans and their families, and also offers classes on everything from dance to financial literacy.
“The biggest challenge has been making people understand that social impact is not a separate activity or an add-on: on the contrary, it’s the foundation of everything. If it’s not the foundation, then it’s not truly embedded in the company culture,” says Akbaraly.
The first step to creating social impact is quite simple: treating people with dignity — regardless of their position in the company or skill set. “I’ve been to a lot of factories where it feels like walking into a military base and there are extreme rules like only a few times you can get up and go to the bathroom,” says Akbaraly. “Luxury shouldn’t just be about high-quality work in terms of the materials, but high-quality treatment of an employee. I think we’ve really lost that.”
This translates to company culture and the workspace: Akbaraly doesn’t have her own office, which she says would create both a physical and mental barrier. The aim is to remove that inherent hierarchy while still acknowledging everyone’s roles. “When you work alongside the artisans, you create conversations and they get to know you so there’s less fear. When you allow humans to be themselves in a space where they feel safe, incredible things happen,” says Akbaraly. For a Western brand, this might translate as travelling to the country where artisans are based and spending substantial time there.
Nurturing that feeling of safety and trust is especially important when working with artisanal techniques that belong to specific cultures and communities, Akbaraly notes. “Our business model is based on co-creation, not extraction. Our artisans have never been anonymous, every piece we make carries the name and story of the person who made it — we give public, consistent and transparent credit to all contributors,” she says. “We allow the cultural heritage and the voices of these people to be transformed into the final product.” Akbaraly is taking co-creation a step further by transitioning to an employee-owned business model to give workers real equity.
It’s not just about labour, either. “We’ve built a bottom-up social entrepreneurship model that’s human first and based around the real needs of the communities,” says Akbaraly. For example, Made For A Woman’s healthcare offering includes work with medical doctors and psychologists, but also alternative healers who understand the communities they’re treating. All its initiatives are designed to be family-friendly, too, with free health insurance for everyone in the family and a school.
Putting social impact first inevitably comes with higher costs. Made For A Woman primarily funds its social impact through its profit, though also receives some support from the government (in the form of conventions and partnerships rather than direct financial aid). As it looks to scale its impact further, the brand is seeking strategic partners and investors who share its vision.
“When your priority is people — paying fair wages, offering training, childcare and support — you inevitably sacrifice some margins,” says Akbaraly. “But for us, it is the only way to build something meaningful, sustainable and transformative. In our experience, this way of working not only uplifts communities, but also creates a ripple effect of joy, creativity and long-term value — a form of abundance that goes far beyond financial profit.”
Scaling the brand
Collaborating with large houses like Fendi and Chloé has allowed Made For A Woman to scale its reach and visibility on the global fashion stage. On the flip side, Western brands have seen value in collaborating with a brand like Made For A Woman because of the opportunities for emotional resonance, storytelling and high-quality craftsmanship.
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Fendi reached out to the label regarding its ‘Hand in Hand’ initiative, which brings together ateliers and workshops, leveraging local craftmanship. The initiative was initially focused on craftspeople in Italy, but expanded to new markets, including Madagascar, last year. The two brands co-created a one-of-a-kind Baguette bag, with Fendi constructing the leather and Made For A Woman handling the raffia, infusing it with Malagasy techniques like crochet, bead embellishments and macramé braiding. “I was really impressed by how they really wanted to understand Madagascar and the needs of the artisans,” Akbaraly says. Fendi renewed the partnership with a collaboration for Spring/Summer 2024, and the two are pairing up again this year.
Chloé began working with the World Fair Trade Organisation in 2020, and since 2023 has been working on adding social enterprises like Made For A Woman to its list of suppliers while helping them gain certifications to verify ethical production standards. The collaboration has been repeated three times: the first pieces were raffia hats as part of a collaborative capsule, followed by the raffia tote bags featured in Chloé’s main line.
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Overall, Akbaraly has a positive view of the structure and credibility that certification and audits offer — in addition to World Fair Trade Organisation verification, Made For A Woman is in the final stages of becoming B Corp certified — and feels that the certifications her brand has achieved have been worth the effort. But she notes that these certification systems tend to be quite top down. “Too often, there is a lack of understanding of the actual needs of different cultures and populations. What works in Europe doesn’t always translate to Madagascar, for instance. So, while certifications are helpful, they must evolve to better reflect local realities,” she says.
Beyond certifications, Made For A Woman is scaling its traceability capabilities, creating digital product passports (DPPs) that connect customers directly with information about the artisans, raffia cultivators and even the biodiversity systems that surround raffia wetlands. “For us, the future of fashion is not only about the finished product, but also about the people, the raw materials and the ecosystems behind it,” says Akbaraly.
It has also started mapping out Madagascar’s first fully transparent raffia supply chain, which it aims to roll out over the next two years. “Challenges are inevitable: infrastructural fragility, connectivity gaps, fragmented supply networks and the need to harmonise traditional craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology. But these hurdles are precisely what makes the project so vital,” says Akbaraly. “Ultimately, our goal is to transform raffia into a case study for how fashion can unite biodiversity, community empowerment and digital innovation, and to set a precedent the rest of the industry cannot ignore.”
Long term, Akbaraly’s vision for Made For A Woman is to inspire the luxury sector to value people and the environment as much as profit. She hopes to eventually expand beyond raffia, building ethical and regenerative supply chains across other natural fibres in Madagascar and beyond. “I want Made For A Woman to become a legacy, not just of beautiful objects, but of transformation,” she says. “A house where each bag or garment carries a story, a thread that connects people across cultures, and a tangible example of how creativity can heal and regenerate.”
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