Check out this Sydney pop-art jewellery label’s collaboration with the Social Outfit

With a name like Doodad and Fandango, you’re probably not expecting a low-key jewellery label. Having kitted out bold dressers like Miley Cyrus, Boy George and Tkay Maidza in her pieces, Nikita Majajas's designs are unabashedly fun, quirky and perfect to spice up a simple outfit – or to add more pop to an already funky ensemble. Each piece of hers is sustainably created and made to order, so there's less waste involved in each adornment produced.

Now, Doodad and Fandango is teaming up with social enterprise the Social Outfit for a new collaboration. The Social Outfit began in Sydney in 2012 and is an independently accredited, ethical trading social enterprise and fashion label that provides employment and training in the fashion industry to people from refugee and new migrant communities in the fashion industry – from clothing production to retail, design and marketing. They also use fabrics donated by mainstream Australian labels like Cue, Sass and Bide and Bianca Spender for their collections.

Majajas has now designed a capsule collection of dresses for the Social Outfit, so that a select group of women who came to Australia with a background in clothing production can partake in a six-week course to learn how to sew, stitch and create the chic, shift-style designs. Each woman will make one dress, each dress will be one of a kind and all of the women are paid for their time. All of the profits of the dresses that are sold are donated straight back to the Social Outfit.

“I love what the Social Outfit do on so many levels," said Majajas in a press release. "They are doing real work helping people who find it near impossible to get work when they immigrate here, they train them up with a practical skill... When they recently approached me about working with them on a collaboration, I jumped at the chance to get involved. Rather than my usual jewellery designer caper I decided the most logical way to be a part of their process was to keep in line with what they already do and design a capsule range of garments.”

Check out the collaboration range online when it drops after the launch on November 5.  

P.S. Here are the First Nations fashion designers rising to the top of their game.