Creating go-to wardrobe pieces that empower both women who wear them and make them.
ABLE IS MOVING FASHION FORWARD
In an industry saturated with consumerism and brands that perpetuate a narrow image of what women should be, ABLE is pushing back and Moving Fashion Forward by creating a culture of empowerment.
OUR STORY
It started with scarves. In Ethiopia we met women coming out of the commercial sex industry who asked us for help finding jobs. We trained them to make scarves and after selling over 4,000 of them in 2 months, we knew we were onto something. People understood that if you're committed to ending poverty, you must create jobs, and do so for women.
ABLE has grown from hand-woven scarves to a lifestyle brand with leather bags, clothes, shoes, and jewelry.
INVESTING IN WOMEN
Women comprise 95% of our staff at ABLE, but globally they often hold the lowest-paid, least-secure jobs. Yet we know women invest twice as much of their income into their families compared to men. When a woman is economically empowered, her children and community thrive, making her crucial to eradicating poverty. ABLE is committed to ensuring every woman receives treatment and compensation reflective of her immense worth.
PUBLISHING OUR WAGES
Our driving motivation is to make a real, measurable difference in the communities we claim to impact. So we spent three years developing our own evaluation system—called ACCOUNTABLE—which evaluates our manufacturing partners on safety, equality, and wages in order to give us better insight into the impact of our supply chain on the women making our products.
Fashion is one of the largest industrial employers of women worldwide, yet only an estimated 2% of fashion workers are paid a livable wage. We want to change that, but we know one of the quickest ways companies will change their practices is if their customers demand it. We published our lowest wages in order to give consumers a clear choice to protect the people making their products, and we want other companies to do the same.
MANUFACTURING PARTNERS
Our jewelry is all made in-house in Nashville, TN, and our leather goods, clothes, and shoes are made by manufacturing partners in Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, India, Portugal, and China. Around the world, we work with entrepreneurs who share our values. We’ve found that partnering with local community leaders results in a more powerful economic transformation rather than trying to command change from the U.S.
