Collaborating with African crafts to assist Ukrainian refugees

Kornit X Kuchinate:

This year’s Kornit Fashion Week Tel Aviv brings diversity and inclusiveness to the forefront with a unique collaboration with Kuchinate, an art and design collective from Tel Aviv made up of African women asylum seekers. Kuchinate means crochet in Tigrinya, the language spoken in Eritrea, where most of the women come from (some also come from Sudan and Ethiopia).

The collective, which has become a local institution, designs and creates a wide range of crocheted home and fashion products such as baskets, pillows, textiles and bags. They also teach crochet to the public in addition to hosting traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean meals and coffee ceremonies.

For Kornit Fashion Week Tel Aviv, Kuchinate partnered with Lahav HaLevy, one of Israel’s most celebrated designers and founder of the Blue Collar Working Group, to design a limited-edition line of t-shirts sustainably produced with Kornit’s on-demand technologies. The collection is comprised of 5 unique prints based on Tigrinyan words with relevance to the Kuchinate women: happiness, freedom, love and hope.

The shirts will be presented and sold during the 3-day event, and afterwards on the Kuchinate website using KornitX technology that enables local production only once an order has been made.

For every t-shirt sold, Kornit will match and donate the amount to female Ukrainian refugees.

Kuchinate was founded in 2011 to provide financial, psychological and social empowerment for these women — many of whom are survivors of human trafficking, torture, and sexual abuse. The collective has positively impacted the lives of hundreds of women, empowering them to sell their wares and interact with the public at large.

Exclusive offer for Kornit employees includes shipping to the office and 20% donation on their behalf to Ukrainian refugees.