Caroline Brustowicz

Fashion4Freedom is a social enterprise that looks to empower Vietnamese artisans. Fashion4Freedom looks to preserve traditional crafts to create high fashion products. It takes 18-21 days to handcraft each pair of shoes. As I witnessed the entire process of the shoes being crafted, from the woodcarver to cobbler, the amount of time and effort each artisan dedicates for the many phases it takes to create a pair of the shoes is incredible. I was interested to see if by creating a pair of the dragon shoes with technology, as opposed to by hand, would take away from the beauty and design of the shoes themselves? Is it the handcrafted aspect that solely gives the shoes their value or at least increases their value?