What is the story behind fashion?
As the daughter of a fashion journalist, Jeanne de Kroon grew up with memories of her mother bringing home beautiful fabrics with incredible stories woven through them. Hearing all these magical stories instils the love that she has for fashion, which later becomes the foundation of her journey alongside women artisans around the world. A journey she’d later call ZAZI Vintage.
However, the road is never a straight line. Before she got to this good part, she was faced with an experience that made her fall out of love with fashion. At the age of 18, Jeanne was scouted and started a short modelling career in New York. She then found herself in a very unglamorous, demanding, and at times, exploitative environment. “I remember thinking when I got to New York, ‘this is so not the glamorous life that I have been told about! Sleeping in a bunk bed, no visa, full face makeup, and being told to wear these polyester clothes for a horrific American webshop,’ she looks back with laughter. Faced with this reality, she felt incredibly uninspired. “I just didn’t feel the magic of it”, she says. There was always a big question that lingered at the back of her mind, “What is the story behind fashion?” She asked herself back then.
When she realised that this was not the path she wanted to take, she made her way to Berlin to study political science. In between her studies, she travelled to Nepal, where she was reunited with her love for textiles. She was reminded of the magical stories her mother used to tell her. “I remember being in Nepal and being pulled into one of these amazing back alleys by this incredible woman who was there in her little shop. We were looking through vintage Saris, and she was explaining to me the ways of her religion, the mountains, the way that women weave, and the threads. Bear in mind, I just came back from this world of bunk beds and underage models. So when I was sitting there for hours and hours hearing all this wisdom engraved within her hands and seeing the glow on her face when she spoke about what she cared about the most, I just remembered feeling enchanted again for the first time with fashion,” she passionately describes her experience.
Mesmerised by these stories, she took on journeys to other parts of the world where she was exposed to a lot more incredible stories about the connections that women have with textiles. At some point during her travel, she was introduced to a family in Afghanistan who have generational connections with textiles. She listened as this family shared fascinating stories behind their textiles and their struggles as artisans who were caught in the middle of a war. “I remember thinking at the time, ‘I wish everyone is buying from this family and not from big brands that are out there,’” she says. After this encounter, she didn’t come back home empty-handed. She bought a few textiles and sold them at a Sunday market in Berlin. For Jeanne, this was the beginning of her journey to answer the big question she had asked herself back then, “What is the story behind fashion?”
Jeanne has beautifully described ZAZI Vintage as a narrative that connects and weaves culture together through cloth. When we ask her, “Why do you think of this as a form of narrative?” She replies, “Fashion, in the end, is a story told through a cloth. A story of your relationship with nature reflected in the dyes that you use, the fibres that you use, how you harvested, and how you work with the soil.” As the teller of these stories, women translate their stories into threads which when forming together, will tell a story about values and beliefs embodied within their culture. Jeanne demonstrates, “When we worked with a collective in Tajikistan, I interviewed the founder of Tahmina, with whom they work with the craft of Suzani, and she shared with me about the meaning behind the way that she weaves her textiles. She says, ‘We always embroidered the black thread with white cloth because the white cloth represents life and the black thread represents the transcendence of life. Every colour that we embroider in between these two dualities reflects the moments in between the experience - the joy and the grief.’ So this is an example of how cloth can capture stories about culture and beliefs and why it is essentially a narrative.”
Working with cultures that are not her own, Jeanne navigates a fine line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. As a white woman coming from a country like the Netherlands, Jeanne made a point of having to decolonise her thinking. At the beginning of her journey, she recognised all of the generational wounds rooted in years of colonialism. However, delving deeper into this world furthers her understanding of how deep these wounds are. She shares, “We are living in a time where there are so many generational wounds that are coming to the surface, rooted in years of colonialism. Wounds that are caused by a patriarchal and capitalist system that has failed nature and women in all layers and all ends. When I started this journey, I knew some of it, but definitely not the depth and vastness of the wounds that the system, which originated from countries like mine, has caused. I think throughout the travels that I’ve done, I continue to see the pain that was there.” Central to this decolonisation is unlearning what she has learned about art. She explains, “When I started the company, there was this decolonising within my perceptual world where I was relearning what art really means. When I used to think about art, I thought about it being a few Dutch painters who were there in the 17th century. I think at some point this gaze has shifted. Art can be found in the hand-spun cotton that a woman weaves with all her love after she carefully nurtures her baby.”
For Jeanne, sustainability is about valuing these fashion pieces as sacred. For people to have deep connections with the clothes they are wearing, they need to be able to see past the models wearing these clothes and look further to find the stories embedded within each piece. Stories about the beliefs, cultures, and ways of life are told by the makers. ZAZI is acting as a bridge on which these stories travel. They are making these stories accessible to consumers. They are putting these makers on the centre stage and letting their voices shine through each piece they crafted. As she emphasises, “The real superstars behind fashions are the creators and the creatives that create these stories. As a fashion brand, we have the responsibility to facilitate these inherent stories and not to make up our own story.”
Although, even when these stories have become accessible, unfortunately, the interest in finding them is not always there. Jean explains her frustration, “We are so conditioned by a thing of fashion. This is something that I struggle with when I am trying to figure out how to navigate this fine line where on the one hand, if I only show the pictures of the artisans, I would understand it, but 99% of the people won’t because we are not conditioned to see fashion being celebrated by the actual makers. On the other hand, these are the people and the stories that should be celebrated and we can’t keep conforming to this existing narrative.” She continues, “It is very frustrating when I post a picture of influencers in a coat, it got more likes than when I posted a beautiful video of the most incredible woman that weaves our Ikat for hours and hours. That kind of content, sadly, doesn’t spark as much interest on social media.”
Jeanne was very careful not to fall into this harmful narrative of white saviorism. She emphasises, “The most important thing for me is to have everything done with cultural co-creation. It is important for me to understand what my intention is and how can I make sure that we both economically, creatively, and almost spiritually benefit equally from this project that we are creating together.” To do that, brands need to include creatives of that culture in all layers of their production process. Allowing them to not only craft their products but also to craft their own representation and stories they wish to tell. Jeanne goes on to share with us about her fashion campaign in Afghanistan. She says, “I have been working with artists in Afghanistan for a very long time but I was never able to do a photoshoot there because of the safety and security reasons. Then last year, we managed to do a campaign that was created by an all-Afghan team.
It was an incredibly beautiful experience and outcome because then you can see the power of storytelling. You can see the magic that can happen when people are facilitated by fashion to tell their stories.”
To end our conversation, Jeanne shares her hope. She expresses, “I hope people would hold these clothes as something very special, very dear, and create so much depth within the connection they have with it. When they do, we are one step closer to reaching sustainability.”
