The craft programme transforming refugees lives
La Fabrique Nomade provides a new hope for migrants
Inès Mesmar, a French ethnologist, could not have anticipated the consequences of finding a piece of embroidery in her mother’s wardrobe. This initiated a conversation in which Mesmar learnt her mother had been an embroiderer in Tunisia before she settled in France.
It was 2015. There was a daily influx of images of refugees living in camps. It struck Mesmar that there might be many artisans among them who, like her mother, would be forced to relinquish their skills.
There is so much to battle with on arrival in a host country: the language barrier, endless paperwork, an inability to communicate one’s qualifications or navigate foreign business. How, she wondered, could these artisans be helped to integrate professionally? “My mother didn’t think her embroidery skills were worth anything – she had no idea of how they might be employed,” Mesmar told an audience last spring at the Homo Faber event in Venice, an exhibition that celebrates craftsmanship.
In 2016 she founded La Fabrique Nomade, an enterprise to help migrant craftsmen to find employment appropriate to their skills. Its airy headquarters are under railway arches near Bastille in Paris, a quarter filled with design workshops. The busy thrum of sewing machines fills a large open-plan room, accompanied by the quiet chatter of eight craftsmen. It is a happy hive of industry: at one end a pearl artist is painstakingly stitching an intricate pattern on to a dress, at the other, Boubacar Ndiaye, 36, a Senegalese designer of traditional African costume, discusses a hemline with Naira Nersisian, from Ukraine. On the ground floor is the jewellery and brass workshop, where the sound of drilling and gentle tapping permeates the air.
Since Mesmar launched La Fabrique Nomade, 76 per cent of her “graduates” have found work, and 91 per cent of those have remained in the industry in which they originally trained. Proficient in 22 skills, the artisans are from 33 countries including the Ivory Coast, Peru, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria. Several have found work with the luxury giant LVMH, which has mentored some of them.
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Each intake of 12 people follows an intense nine-month programme of training that involves French lessons and adapting their craft skills with the support of government funding, private donors and financial partners. They are paired with French designers (from Loewe, Repossi, Chaumet and Celine) and helped to create a production run, the results of which are listed for sale.
Success stories include Katayon Atayi, a 60-year-old Iranian seamstress who was hired by Dior, and Ablaye Mar, a Senegalese refugee skilled in Cornely embroidery, which has nearly died out in France.
By the end of his time with La Fabrique Nomade Mar had joined Atelier Caraco, which produces stage costumes and haute couture. He now works at Kenzo and obtained French nationality two years ago.
“I want people to realise that these people are not a ‘problem’, but rather individuals with extraordinary talents that can enrich our culture,” Mesmar says. She also hopes that France might re-examine its educational systems.
“Integration isn’t only about a person having to adapt to a host country,” Mesmar says. “It’s reciprocal.” The designers who have acted as mentors often talk about how much they have learnt too. Furthermore, the skills offered by these artisans are needed. In 2022 Pôle emploi, the French governmental agency that registers unemployed people and helps them to find work, reported that there were 8,000 sewing vacancies.
The artisans are impressed by the scheme’s access to designers. “We visited the Christian Dior atelier a few months ago,” Ndiaye says. “That gives you hope that you could possibly work there one day.”
Lester Martinez, 48, a jeweller from Venezuela, arrived in France at the end of 2020 and has been able to continue creating gold and silver jewellery and restoring precious stones. “How we’ve been helped with expressing technical language and the materials we get to work with is incredible,” he says. “We’ve also had a jeweller from Chaumet come in to teach us. Now that is a real gift.”
Ndiaye adds: “Before this I was doing menial work. It was really hard to stay positive. Coming here has been so life-changing.”
There are no comparable outfits elsewhere in Europe or in the UK, although Mesmar hopes soon
to collaborate with Italy and Canada and establish links with other countries. Once again she returns
to her inspiration: her mother. “She’s proud of me but she regrets this project didn’t happen sooner,” she says. “She made her first speech at the age of 70 during a reciprocity prize to our company, which has made her resume her French lessons.”
lafabriquenomade.com; homofaber.com
