From today and hopefully on a weekly basis, Irenebrination will follow the vicissitudes of the workers from the Chieti-based Sixty company through a documentary that could be considered as a joint venture between this site and the local workers.
A successful clothing company manufacturing products aimed at young people, Sixty was founded in 1989 by Wicky Hassan and Renato Rossi. Things went pretty well for the first ten years and the company expanded launching new labels and lines and opening shops in other countries.
A series of questionable bizarre financial operations started roughly ten years after it was founded, on 31st December 1998, when Sixty sold all its labels to a Luxembourg based company and bought, just a few hours afterwards, the distribution rights for the same labels it had just sold. While the main aim of these transactions was transferring the label royalties in countries where you can easily have tax reduction, this operation was also the official beginning of a new phase marked by a reckless expansion also in other sectors, wrong style choices and consequent bad sales.
Hit by the financial crisis, the company was bought in the summer of 2012 by a mysterious Asian investment fund called Crescent Hyde Park (CHP) with legal offices on the Cayman Islands. CHP acquired the entire company but its plans on the future of the company and of the brands it produced - Miss Sixty, Murphy & Nye, Energie, Killah and Refrigiwear - are still unclear.
The main victims of this situation are the Chieti-based workers, 414 people currently fighting for their jobs and protesting in a caravan outside the company HQ. The Irenebrination team has spent and is spending some time with them to understand who they are and what they are fighting for, while exploring other issues related to this situation such as the Made in Italy Vs Made in China dichotomy and the impact that a job loss in Chieti, Italy, can have on a global level.
Sixty used to own quite a few stores also in other countries and some of them have closed down, while orders for the Spring/Summer 2013 season were recently cancelled by UK retailers as the company wasn't able to deliver the garments.
The documentary is entitled “Sixty Shades of Unemployment”, a pun on the name of the brand and on the popular erotic novel. Even though deeply sad about the situation they are living in, the workers wanted to have a sort of bitterly funny twist to their story (fashion is erotic in many ways at least from what they tell us on glossy and glam mags, but there is nothing erotic in this story with too many rather mysterious twists...) that's why we opted for this title.
Our main aim is to serialise the documentary (a work-in-progress since the story is unfolding as we write and shoot made with absolutely no funds) on a YouTube channel we opened with that purpose, “60Shades” . We do hope indeed that this format will become a vehicle for the workers to let their stories and experiences be heard on a global level (the doc will be in Italian with English subtitles), but will also be an opportunity for the watchers to listen to the workers' sharing their views about the fashion industry and thoughts about the death of research in fashion and the consequences of companies becoming more interested in generating massive profits than in creating real jobs and original products. Enjoy.
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