Sisley x KISANY: 10 years!
10 years of shared history
About KISANY
Since 2013, the Sisley Foundation has been supporting KISANY, a social enterprise that uses embroidery to help women who are excluded from society in Goma (DR Congo) and Kigali (Rwanda) rebuild their lives through learning to sew. Every year, more than a hundred women create a collection of high-end, hand-embroidered home linens. In addition to providing dignified work opportunities to these women a portion of profits are reinvested in the region on social initiatives that support the local community.
The Sisley Foundation has contributed regularly to this worthy project over the last ten years, creating “L'École des Femmes” to support learning embroidery along with other programs to become independent. and The “Merci Maman” programme in particular which covers the cost of further education for embroiderers’ children.
Alongside this support, the Sisley Group works regularly with KISANY, who make cosmetics bags and other embroidered articles which are sold or gifted across the globe with Sisley products.
I enjoy sewing simple, joyful words and finding them throughout the house. They brighten the room and soothe the soul.
A unique collaboration to celebrate 10 years of partnership
To celebrate ten years of working together, Sisley is renewing its commitment to KISANY with the creation of a beautiful cosmetics pouch, inspired by founder Isabelle d’Ornano’s own embroidery.
Highlights of our work with KISANY in images:
2003 :
KISANY was founded
2013 :
The Sisley Foundation began supporting KISANY with the launch of “Ecole des Femmes” (A school for women)
2016 :
Financing the schooling of a hundred embroiderers’ children through the “Merci Maman!” (Thank you Mum) program.
2019 :
Embroidery or agricultural training for mothers and daughters through the “Un jardin à Goma” (A garden in Goma) project.
2022 :
Holding an exhibition of work by one of the brand’s beloved artists, Sydney Albertini, to support KISANY with an emergency food fund during the civil war in the Kivu region.
2023 :
Celebrating ten years of working together: co-creating an incredible Sisley x KISANY cosmetics pouch and launching the “Femmes agricultrices” (Women of agriculture) independence program.
The Sisley Foundation has also decided to renew its commitment to KISANY for three more years helping the embroiderers and their community to consolidate their independence.
Together we celebrate love and joy! In the hands of the embroiderers, each hopeful stitch comes to life, giving them back their dignity.
The Sisley x KISANY pouch
Surrounded by stars and hearts and decorated with a cloud or an eye, these words are an ode to the eclectic spirit and sensitivity of the brand’s founding family. The leopard print piping is a complicit reminder of the brand’s favourite patterns.
Inspired by, if not reproduced almost identically from, Isabelle d'Ornano's own creations found on cushions in the Maisons Sisley, the embroidery on this cosmetic pouch pays hommage to this philanthropic aesthete.
Each cosmetics pouch requires the careful work of over four artisans over two days. Across this project over 4000 days of work were offered to these formidable artisans.
