Adriana Restrepo has a lot of experience searching for
silver linings. The Colombian fashion designer and environmentalist
was a pregnant 18-year-old when drug traffickers in Medellin, her
violence-stained hometown, killed her partner, leaving her to raise
their son on her own.
Maybe that has something to do with her talent for finding
beauty in other people's trash, which she avidly collects to turn
into hip, colorful home decor and accessories.
Restrepo lights up as she criss-crosses Medellin, Colombia's
second city, visiting used tire depots and warehouses full of
cannibalized computers. "It's my shopping mall," she said, beaming
as she brandished defunct hard disks she planned to turn into
pop-art coasters or clocks.
Restrepo, who is now 33, is known as the "All-Terrain
Blonde" among the impoverished trash-pickers of Medellin, who sort
through the city's garbage looking for whatever can be reused or
recycled.
She is their regular customer in the subway stations where
they spread their meager wares on the floor, hoping to sell an old
CD, broken toy or empty box. "I've always been very aware of
nature. With my brand, I try to send a message of caring for the
environment by giving things a second life. But they have to be
beautiful. Because who likes ugly?" she told AFP.
In the living room of the small apartment she shares with her
15-year-old son, David, Restrepo shows off her workbench -- a
reconverted kitchen table -- and her shelves stacked with rescued
treasures
This is where she transforms wine corks into USB flash
drives, old inner tubes into trendy bags, discarded plastic toys
into flower pots. She proudly shows off her two sewing machines,
one of which she received from the Victims' Unit, a government body
tasked with helping Colombians affected by an armed conflict that
has simmered for more than half a century.
Over the years, the conflict has drawn in the army, leftist
guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers. It has
killed more than 220,000 people and uprooted six million.
The violence has been fueled by the drug trade in Colombia, the
world's largest cocaine producer. Medellin, home to the now-defunct
cartel led by late kingpin Pablo Escobar, has been hit especially
hard. "The Trianas, a gang linked to the narcos and the guerrillas,
killed my boyfriend, David Alexander," Restrepo said.
"I never found out why. I was three months pregnant." She
has had just one goal ever since, she said: to get through the
ordeal. Her mother took care of her infant son while she finished
her studies -- all while working from home.
Today, Restrepo markets her creations all over the world through
her Facebook page, Adriana Restrepo Eco Diseno. She also teaches
young people looking to break into the fashion industry.
One of her students is 23-year-old Catalina Casas, who was
uprooted by the Colombian conflict when paramilitaries killed her
uncle. Like Restrepo's younger self, she is a single mother
desperate to make it in design.
"I love sewing! I would never have imagined you could make a bag
out of a tire," she said. On a recent day, Restrepo visited the
sprawling slum of Comuna 13, a shantytown perched precariously in
the hills on the outskirts of Medellin, to give a Christmas
workshop.
Armed with just paintbrushes, glue and Santa Claus napkins, she
taught a dozen residents to turn a scratched CD into a festive wine
coaster. It all fits into her larger mission, she said. "We have to
show that things can be reused, instead of thrown away," she
said