In 2008 the Municipality of Eindhoven commissioned the students of the IM masters department at the Design Academy Eindhoven to come up with a proposal to improve the condition of the local prostitutes addicted to heavy drugs.
Andrea Bandoni, Davide Dulcetti and Joana Meroz collaborated on a non-moralistic proposal in which the prostitutes were given alternative forms of income while at the same time giving them the freedom to make their own choices about whether or not to continue using drugs or prostituting themselves. Bandoni, Dulcetti and Meroz created a system in which the prostitutes could participate on fashion workshops organized by fashion designers anytime they wanted, and get payed right on spot. The prostitutes’ skills, interests and other non-professional fashion limitations became part of the fashion design pieces themselves.
The proposal is that prostitutes work on pieces created by fashion designers from the Red Light Fashion project in Amsterdam, creating a link between the Tippelzone (prostitution zone in Dutch) in Eindhoven and the prostitution district in Amsterdam.
Fashion workshop with prostitutes in their own environment.
Industrially produced shirts are deconstructed and cut up in pieces...
...and the prostitutes could assemble the pieces in any way they liked...
...the result is each time a unique piece of clothing dependent on the construction of each prostitute, which gets exhibited and sold in the Red Light Fashion in Amsterdam, thus generating an alternative form of income for the prostitutes, as well as unique fashion for the designers...