Giselle van der Star (29) is a young woman who has been consciously engaged with the clothing she buys for years. 'I wear a lot of basics, so you don't have to keep buying new clothes every season. Moreover, I want to buy clothing made from sustainable materials and made fairly.'

'Despite various labels about fair and sustainably produced clothing, it's difficult to know 100 percent if a brand is doing well in all respects.' Giselle therefore concluded that she had to make it herself and started Atelier Jungles in early March.

Sustainable fabrics

'We make beautiful basic clothing here, t-shirts, pants, cardigans. Everything from sustainable fabrics like organic cotton and the designs are just a bit different, making it fashionable.'

Giselle opened her studio at a special time. 'We opened the studio only to have to close it again due to the corona crisis. That caused a lot of stress and tears, but now we have been open for two months and it's going very well,' she says. Initially, Giselle wanted to have her clothing line made abroad. 'I found very beautiful sustainable fabrics, but I couldn't get into the factories abroad. They claim to work fairly, but the doors remain closed. So there was only one solution, I had to have it made here in the Netherlands.'

The Hague works

'Through the municipality of The Hague, I came into contact with the people from The Hague works, they help people get back to work who have a distance to the labor market. Some of them haven't had a job for a while and need a bit more space to re-enter the labor process. They also get that space here. They get my trust and the freedom to find their place, and it's amazing to see what people can achieve then,' Giselle proudly tells.

To the question 'where do you want to go with this workshop', Van der Star cannot give an answer. 'I don't necessarily want to become very big, I want to create awareness. I'm not a green guru or anything, but be aware of your purchases. A shirt for three euros in the store, then you can assume that someone has suffered for it,' says Giselle.