VirginiaKate

Brandt

In 2001, Christopher Bailey became Creative Director of Burberry with the simple mission of modernising the brand. His efforts pushed Burberry into many firsts — first luxury house on social media, first livestreamed runway show, first to call itself as much a media-content company as a design company. Two decades and four logos later, the question of who Burberry actually is went unanswered. In March 2026 I bought a Prorsum coat through a collector and tried to authenticate it. Three Burberry stores, four sales assistants, and zero answers later, the brand’s own staff couldn’t place a piece from its own archive. The disconfirmation model of hospitality has a name for what happens next: inconsistency erodes loyalty before it erodes sales, and the gap between a house and its own past widens until the customer notices it before the house does.

Earnest Alulu has been a tailor at Coloriage since 2021, but ask him about his career and the story stretches further than that. He trained in Nigeria in the early nineties, apprenticed for twenty years, then left for Italy in 2016. At the refugee camp he was told that to keep tailoring he’d have to learn European pattern-making — so he went back to school, again. He arrived at Coloriage with two languages of cloth and the patience to fold them into one. The conversation that follows traces three nations of cloth: the apprenticeship in Lagos, the refugee-camp classroom, the Italian atelier where two traditions finally sit beside each other on the same garment. Coloriage, he says, is the first place where his work is the work of one person and not two.

Hope For South Sudan is a holistic care and education centre that has provided a safe home, school, and clinic for hundreds of vulnerable children since 2009. Building on its mission, HFSS now seeks to implement vocational training in arts and textiles — equipping students with practical skills in craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, and the creative industries to foster financial independence. The brief that follows lays out the routes: fibre-arts curriculum, market-side opportunities at South Sudan Fashion Week, partnership scaffolding for graduating students. One of the most promising pathways lies in the fibre arts. By investing in textile and design training, HFSS can position its students to participate meaningfully in this growing industry while preserving traditional crafts and promoting self-sufficiency.