This week, MAISON MOTEMA joins the United Nations Fashion & Lifestyle Network in New York, bringing our perspective on sustainable fashion, craftsmanship and the role of business in advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For our founder, Verlaine-Diane Soobroydoo, it is also a return to familiar ground from an entirely new perspective.
After more than a decade working within the international development space and supporting the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals, she returns to the United Nations as the founder and creative director of a fashion house now putting many of those principles into practice.
From policy to practice
MAISON MOTEMA was built around a simple conviction: sustainable development must ultimately translate into economic opportunity, dignified work and value created within communities.
Our handbags are designed in New York and made in our atelier in Dakar, Senegal, where craftsmanship and savoir-faire sit at the center of the house.
This model directly connects our work with SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. Rather than separating design from production, we are investing in skills, craftsmanship and an atelier structure designed to ensure that the people creating our pieces participate meaningfully in the value generated by them.
Our small-batch approach also reflects SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. We produce intentionally, in limited quantities, with an emphasis on materials, construction, longevity and pieces designed to remain relevant beyond a season.
And as a woman-founded and centered business, SDG 5: Gender Equality remains closely connected to the broader vision of MAISON MOTEMA: demonstrating how entrepreneurship, trade and creative industries can become vehicles for greater economic participation.
A different vision for sustainable luxury
For us, sustainable fashion is not simply about what a handbag is made from. It is also about how it is made, where value is created, whose knowledge is recognized and what kind of economy we build around it.
That is the perspective MAISON MOTEMA brings to the United Nations.
From conversations about the Sustainable Development Goals to their implementation inside our Dakar atelier, this moment represents something deeply important to us: the possibility of building a luxury house where design, identity, savoir-faire and dignity at work can exist together.
Because the SDGs were never intended to remain on paper.
They were meant to be implemented.
And for MAISON MOTEMA, implementation happens one piece at a time, from Dakar to New York.
MAISON MOTEMA — Designed in New York. Made in Dakar.
