Fashion & Beauty

Located in a grimy, tough, but changing area, Rough Sleepers is a new clothing boutique with a social message. "Sleeping rough" is an english term for the homeless sleeping outside. Although the Camden area is slowly becoming gentrified, there is still a rough and ready feel to it, with left-over goths and punks parading down the street on the weekend. This shop, sponsored by Novas, a social exclusion charity, will be hiring and training homeless people to design clothes and work there. The shop itself is designed to look like a supermarket shopping cart, used by many homeless to transport their life's possessions. Now what about the clothes...a mix of new, young designers; some eco-friendly, some straight out of art school, and some more established, along with interesting silver and costume jewelery. Vinti Andrews designs men's wear--a husband and wife team, she designs the abstract hand-printed graphics on the black and white tee-shirts. Zest jeans are hand crafted, well-fitting jeans, "designed and developed to make you happy". Rika Shioya designs scarves and clothing using vintage kimonos and western fabrics--velvet scarves have a stripe of kimono material. Ramone Barreto makes eco-jewellery out of his native Colombian materials. He soaks, bends and presses totomo, a form of coconut, into medallions and earrings. All the profits will be reinvested into services such as education, housing and training to get the homeless back on track. :: Rough Sleepers