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Fashion 4 Development
Inaugural Luncheon |
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Eredappa Hart with models in her designs.
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Vogue Italia Editor in Chief Franca Sozzani celebrated her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador to Fashion 4 Development, at the inaugural First Ladies and Fashion 4 Development luncheon on September 19, 2011 hosted by Evie Evangelou and Lincoln Center’s founding Director of Fashion, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.
Honored in absentia was Bibi Russell, who founded Fashion 4 Development in 1996 with UNESCO as a supporting partner of the UN Millennium Development Goals – but she
sent a message of hope and from the jungles of Bangladesh, where she employs over 130,000 women. This message of empowerment was echoed by Sozzani and Winston Wolkoff, whose exhortations for harnessing the power of fashion's multi-billion dollar industry to help grow and sustain economies inspired a rapt audience.
Concluding a United Nations High Level Meeting on empowering women in the digital era which included speakers such Ms. Cherie Blair and Ms. Geena Davis, the luncheon was attended by several Heads of State, First Ladies, foreign dignitaries and fashion influencers such as Naeem Khan, Rachel Roy, Vivienne Tam, Dr. Valerie Steele, Robert Verdi, Michelle Harper, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Miguelina Gambaccini, Coralie Charriol, Jennifer Creel, Minnie Mortimer, Carolina Zapf, Jennifer Creel, Jackie Astier, Gillian Hearst Simonds, Susan Shin and Barbara Winston.
This premiere campaign, led by First Ladies from around the world and supported by the
fashion, creative, business, diplomacy and media sectors, uses fashion as a tool to empower women and implement creative strategies for sustainable economic growth and autonomy. The purpose of the campaign is to create awareness and raise funds that will be dispersed as grants to organizations and individuals to empower their impoverished communities, under the auspices of the World Fashion Development Programme. Positing that “Giving Back is the New Luxury”, the focus was on the increasingly decisive role of fashion in creating economic growth in developing countries. H.E. Ambassador Geri Benoit, former First Lady of Haiti, now Ambassador of Haiti to Italy presented Fashion-ABLE Haiti, a project of the Embassy of Haiti in Rome. The luncheon also featured a a tribute to First Ladies, a fashion show by Eredappa Hart, the Nigerian designer and “Shawl to Remember”, a joint initiative of the Advanced Development for Africa and Fashion 4 Development.
As an official platform of South South News (“SSN”), the media partner of the UN, Fashion 4 Development is a global awareness campaign that unites diplomacy, business, media, and the creative industries for the purpose of helping to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals # 1 (End Poverty and Hunger), # 3 (Gender Equality – Empowering Women) and #8 (Global Partnership, through the Expression of Fashion). “Fashion 4 Development has the full support of South South News, the United Nations and it’s Member States” states Ambassador Francis Lorenzo, SSN President.
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Honoree Franca Sozzani with co-host Evie Evangelou.
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Co-host Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.
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Valerie Steele.
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Carolina Zapf.
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Melanne Verveer, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.
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Dorrit Moussaieff, First Lady of Iceland.
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First Lady of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
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Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos.
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Coralie Charriol.
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Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda.
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Naeem Khan.
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Robert Verdi.
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Vivienne Tam.
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Tracy Stern.
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Michelle Harper.
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Georgie.
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Coumba Toure.
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Jennifer Creel.
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Christina Kim.
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Sandro Sassoli.
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| Photos: Studio SOMA |
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