VIDEO. FIFA World Cup: young designer turns T-shirts into corsets

“First of all, I don’t want new t-shirts, the idea is to do upcycling,” Mai Jarah explains. In his parents’ apartment in Les Lilas (Saint-Saint-Denis), this 19-year-old fashion designer takes old T-shirts to turn them into corsets, all “without chemical intervention, it’s not recycling.” His creations are a disdain for fast fashion. “At first this is not out of environmental convictions, but rather out of outrage at the mistreatment of the labor force in some countries. I cut my consumption by nine to move towards ethical brands,” she continues.

The daughter of an Argentinian father and a Breton mother, Mai first submitted this project to enroll in fashion school. She was then noticed by Yussouf Fofana, artistic director of the Parisian brand Maison Château Rouge (MCR), who met her one day while she was wearing one of her corsets. Excited, he offers to put them up for sale during the World Cup (November 20 – December 18).

In three months, she found the “mai:” logo, started an Instagram account “@madeinmai”. “This is my first time making money,” laughs the designer, who sells each corset for 120 euros. “Collaborating with Maison Château Rouge saves me from having to look for a point of sale,” she continues, but in the future she will have to think about how to sell her work, “probably by pre-orders, since they are unique. parts.” “I don’t want to infiltrate a mass production system,” concludes Mai, true to her ethics.