Meghan Markle: Cesta Collective, invested in by Duchess of Sussex, pays workers just 20cents hourly for bags

5 comments

1. When the Duchess of Sussex announced this summer that she was investing in a luxury handbag brand popular with Hollywood A-listers, she spoke enthusiastically about how the company’s “ethical standards” were “incredibly important to me”.

   Yet a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that Cesta Collective – whose high-end designs sell for more than £700 ($1400) a time – pays some of the women who make them as little as 10 pence (20 cents) an hour.

   Weavers working from their cement or mud brick homes in isolated, rural villages in Rwanda can earn as little as 82p for an eight-hour day, despite the company hailing them as “talented female artisans” who are the “best in class at their craft”.

   The figure is less than half the £1.70 a day the World Bank considers as the “extreme poverty” line.

2. Wow. nice smear job. Again. Feel better for posting more hate, kingbobbyjoe?

3. 

   I am always vary of such brands. Very often these brands pay little to nothing to indigenous artisans for their craft. It’s shameful. First it was full on plagiarism (recent Valentino scandal for eg) now they act like like they are doing such philanthropic work when they employ workers for their brand when in reality they are paid so little.

   That picture that accompanied the announcement (white woman sitting on bench with artisans working on ground) was awful and now this

4. Grain of salt since it is a Daily Mail reprint, although better sourced than most DM material. The Sussexes have terrible staff. I don’t like them but I don’t think Meghan wants to do something like this. Their staff seems incompetent in all manner of ways- trying to launch her jams before owning the name is such a basic blunder, failing to vet, failing to find a brand. Yikes. Of course the biggest takeaway is don’t buy these bags!

5. Wow, what an expose.

   Hard hitting journalism right here.

   Thank Goodness, the Daily Mail is now in the business of ensuring fair renumeration and wages for workers in the Global South.

   What would we as a society do without their investigative skills?

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