I’m Ivana, I was born in Accra, Ghana and grew up in Germany where I started my journey in the fashion industry at the age of 17. Mainly I worked as a Visual Merchandiser for luxury brands. During the lockdown I retrained as a UX designer and founded Ward’ROBE Affaire, a Berlin-based fashion rental start-up. We’re currently a team of 3, consisting of Marc Stegner, Estephania Sánchez-Méndez and me. Through the True Cost Documentary I have learned to cherish garments and began to radically reduce my own fashion consumption to no longer be a part of the textile waste problem that countries like Ghana have to face. 15 Million items from the western world are unloaded in Kantamanto (Ghana’s second-hand clothing market) every week. An estimated 40% becomes waste and is dumped in the Gulf of Guinea or sent to landfills where it burns in the backyards of Accra’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. My main motivation is contributing towards a fashion community which makes use of what has already been made to counter the production of waste.
How did the Creative Matterz Fund help you realize your project?
With the help of the Creative Matterz Fund we were able to gain the collaboration with rauwm ( previously Blogger Bazaar) as one of our Charity Lenders. Furthermore we’ve been provided with great mentoring regarding Influencer marketing and PR. The funding helped us to offer an all inclusive rental experience, meaning renters received their charity rental items without any delivery or cleaning costs. We took care of the entire process, so the renter could solely focus on looking good and doing good at the same time.
Who were your mentors?
We had the first and second mentoring session with Kim Gerlach. We discussed the project goals and got help with selecting charity lenders. For the third mentoring session we dived into the world of PR with Inga Mücke and had one more, the final and fourth session, for a last check before the project deadline with Cherie Birkner. We discussed the current standpoint and business possibilities for the future of ‘ROBE.
