Making Equality Fashionable in CVILLE
Callan Shore, staff writer
Charlottesville is a hub of activists and change-makers, but few have devoted their entire lives to human rights. Gwen Cassady, a Charlottesville resident and UVA alumna, has done just that. Cassady’s eyes were first opened to injustice when she traveled the world in and after college.
She said, “I’ve been very blessed to see a great deal on our planet and the most important takeaway was that there is a level of human suffering that the more privileged are not aware of.”
Cassady grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, but came to Charlottesville to attend UVA for her undergrad years. She originally wanted to work on Wall Street, but after graduating, she decided that she wanted to travel the world and then get a masters’ degree in education instead.
After traveling and Grad school at UVA, Cassady has settled in Charlottesville and in the last year started a nonprofit called Managing Love. One of the programs of Managing Love is a small business called the Super Sewing Shop which employs and supports refugee women.
The idea for the shop first came to Cassady when she heard a local woman named Deb Jackson was collecting fabric and sewing machines and distributing them to refugee women. The two women met up and eventually came up with the idea of starting a refugee run clothing store. Cassady said she knew this shop was needed because refugee women in Charlottesville often do not get paid what they deserve. With Jackson’s connections in the refugee community and Cassady’s collection of unused clothes, they had a perfect plan.
Cassady explained that helping the environment is an important issue to her, so she wanted to be environmentally conscious with the store. She decided that because 9 to 14 trillion tons of textile waste is generated each year in the US, the items for sale would simply be thrifted or upcycled versions of the clothes she already had. Upcycling clothing consists of altering and adding details to already-made clothing items.
Cassady said, “I was expecting three refugee women one morning in April, but while finishing a meeting, I saw multiple cars pulling up, and 25 or 30 refugees poured out.”
By August, Cassady opened the first pop-up of the Super Sewing Shop in Stonefield Shopping Center, four months after the idea originated. The future of the Super Sewing Shop will be online at EcoChic.Boutique, and once the shop is more profitable Cassady will pass it off to the refugee women who helped build it.
Despite the extensive labor it took to create the Super Sewing Shop, Cassady is not slowing down. Her current endeavor is a documentary about Charlottesville’s homeless population. She has a special interest in this subject because she has been homeless four times in her life.
Cassady explained, “As a social entrepreneur, I always look at societal injustices and how I, as a single individual, can make this world a better place
