Project prison runway

MILAN - Here, jailbirds are transformed into designers.

I watched as needles traveled up and down, sewing together the plush fabric that will eventually be worked into one of the magnificently detailed costumes for the world-renowned La Scala opera house.

This would look like any other custom shop if it were not for the prison guard standing at attention alongside the sewing machine.

This is the scene at San Vittore women’s prison.

Women here are serving sentences of five years or more – many for drug trafficking or stealing, others for murder. All the same, these women are given a chance to become a part of a program, teaching them skills that they will be able to use when they leave.

Our prison tour guide boasted about the differences between San Vittore and the inferior prisons in the United States.

We walked through the hallways alongside many of the inmates because during the day the doors to the women’s rooms are left open. Inside, the rooms looked like my freshman dorm plus a toilet and a kitchen stocked with utensils (everything but knives) and a camping stove.

The prison concentrates on the rehabilitation of inmates and believes that by giving them pathways to success in the outside world, the women will find their way.

This is one of the reasons why they decided to collaborate with Cooperative Alice in 1992.  

The program includes cultural arts courses like film editing, theater, poetry and tailoring, giving inmates more than “survival” skills by helping them discover their passions and talents in an effort to decrease recidivism rates.

It was created with the intent to give a means of employment for women serving sentences.

They say it is working.

Alice’s mission is “to focus on innovative ways of combining economic equity and firm social solidarity; in this way, Alice touches and deals with the two spheres, the ‘enterprise’ and ‘social responsibility,’ in the constant search for delicate balance.”

Cooperative Alice believes in the constitutional principle of Article 27: “Punishment cannot consist of treatment contrary to human dignity and must aim at rehabilitating the condemned,” building a system of relationships between prisoners and the outside business world.

Sartoria SanVittore and Jail Cats are two brand names that have come out of the prison walls in the past two years.

Last year, inmates even strutted the catwalk in wedding dresses they designed and stitched themselves, with guards at each side of the runway.