Blue Tin Production: The Immigrant-Run American Dream
Close your eyes and picture Chicago.
The first things to come to my mind are the spontaneous performances while waiting for the L, the collective, city-wide denial of how cold it really is and most notably, the lions outside the Art Institute of Chicago. As much as I love this great city, however, fashion is not one of the things I tend to associate with it. Hoda Katebi, an activist and fashion blogger of Iranian origin, is looking to change that. With the launch of Blue Tin Production, Katebi is building an even more progressive and feminist brand that is embedding fashion into the cultural fabric of Chicago.
Hoda Katebi and Hasan Minhaj for Vogue
Blue Tin Production, named after those fun Danish cookie tins that seem to always hold sewing supplies and not cookies, is a fashion co-op that will be operating out of Chicago. The goal of the company – aside from providing a transparent production process – is to employ immigrant and refugee women. This will make it America’s first clothing cooperative to be run exclusively by refugee and immigrant women.. Katebi isn’t just looking to create a charity project though. She prides herself on the quality of clothing that she plans to produce and stated in a Vogue article that they “prioritize talent.”
Katebi is bringing a fresh, yet relatable, perspective to the fashion industry. As a Muslim, hijab-wearing immigrant who grew up in Oklahoma, Katebi is no stranger to the struggles of the immigrant experience and the intersectionality of cultural identity and fashion. Her blog, JooJoo Azad, which has a focus on not only ethical fashion and the rejection of mainstream beauty standards but also the intersection of fashion and social justice, has been a main project of hers and is representative of both her Iranian and American identities.
She combines her cultural experiences with her frustrations with the industry in this production company, hoping to kickstart a larger movement of ethical production and inclusive employment. One of the women employed through this promise of inclusive employment is Mercy, a Nigerian immigrant who has recently left an abusive relationship. Women like Mercy, who often hold low promises of employment and come from difficult situations, are exactly who Katebi is hoping to employ in the co-op, which, by definition, provides the workers with ownership of the company, giving them more control over their work and working conditions.
Having a production method that the women of the company can be proud of is also a goal of the co-op. As many big companies work to display their names as having ethical production, Blue Tin Production is built entirely off of this idea, and though it is not the first company to do so, Katebi is putting her own spin on the idea of transparent and ethical production. She plans on offering visits to the company so that people can see exactly what goes into making all of the clothes that they buy regularly, hoping to inform more people on just how terrible the sweatshop method of production is.
While Katebi and the co-op may seem as if they hold lofty goals that will be hard to deliver on, the company is already gaining clients, having signed on several designers as well as an in-house collaboration with a major, though still unnamed, department store. With the clear display of their production process and employment of women who struggle to find job opportunities, Blue Tin Production holds the promise of changing the landscape of clothing production for the better.