Fair-trade fashion by UNC alumna to star in Pit show today

Elephant-print tunics, hand-woven scarves and an inspiring mission are sure to catch attention in the Pit today.

Marissa Heyl, founder of Symbology Clothing, is hosting a fashion show in the Pit as part of a recurring series called “Fashion a Better World,” to raise awareness about fair-trade clothing and social justice.

Heyl, a 2007 UNC alumna, said the inspiration for her work came from growing up near a Ten Thousand Villages, an artisan craft store with a location in Raleigh.

“I grew up going there and seeing beautiful scarves with pictures of the artisan women who made them next to them, with information on how through fair trade, they were able to pay for their children’s education and support their family and earn an income,” Heyl said.

“I became really interested in the idea that my consumerism and shopping was affecting their lives thousands of miles away, and the idea that there can be women’s empowerment through fair trade.”

In her time at UNC, Heyl received both the Mahatma Gandhi Fellowship — an award for social service focused on South Asia — and an undergraduate research fellowship to travel to India with the intent to participate in social justice work and volunteering.

Heyl said she spent time in slums and artisan communities interviewing women about their lives in the fair trade system.

“I could understand their struggles as women,” she said. “I saw a lot of similarities between us, and found fair trade as an empowering tool to give them a source of income.”

Heyl said one of Symbology’s main goals is to differentiate its support of these artisans from charity work.

“What’s great about the work that we’re doing is that it utilizes skills that are culturally embedded and passed down from generation to generation,” she said.

Savita Sivakumar, a junior, started interning for Symbology last summer and identified with its mission so much that she decided to stay on.

“I really fell in love with Marissa’s ideals about fair trade and paying people fairly,” Sivakumar said.

“Once you see how the quality of life these people have is so much further down than ours, it makes it ridiculous that we can’t even pay them properly to make our clothes.”

Sivakumar works on the business side of Symbology, but said she was eager to jump on board when Heyl revealed she wanted to host a Pit show.

“A lot of people think of fair trade as hemp-looking clothing and stuff that’s not really high-fashion,” Sivakumar said.

“But Marissa does a great job with the clothes — they’re super fashion-forward, and she’s showing people that the extra 10 bucks is worth it, because it helps people.”

Symbology isn’t the only organization that will be strutting its stuff in the Pit — Mamafrica, which supports women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through education and healing art programs, will accompany Symbology.

Disc jockeying the fashion show will be the Beat Making Lab — a program developed out of a class taught at UNC.

UNC instructors Pierce Freelon and Stephen Levitin — or Apple Juice Kid — founded the company ARTVSM, in conjunction with The Lab, which strives to combine art and activism through various mediums.

“Pierce and I have devoted ourselves to exploring the spaces where art and activism combine, and Marissa is a perfect example of that,” Levitin said. “So I hope students will see these examples of real companies and real initiatives where profit is not the only measure of success — social impact is as well.”

arts@dailytarheel.com