pic.twitter.com/LI2UJEQBKT
— Sara Cetty (@SaraCetty1) February 20, 2017
From her small sewing workshop in Isernia, in the centre of Italy, Concetta Sarachella designs clothes that have won awards across the country and abroad. “I always try to put in something from my Roma origins: the colours, the tissues, the laces,” she tells me.
Sarachella’s family is part of a Roma community which arrived in the Molise region centuries ago. The 35-year-old fashion designer and cultural mediator works under the name “Sara Cetty” and is seen as a rising star in Italy. One of her creations was exhibited in Rome during celebrations to mark 150 years since the country's 1861 unification.
Despite honors and awards, Sarachella says she has had to fight discrimination due to her Roma heritage. “I am an Italian national and I’ve never had problems with papers, but I’ve faced other kinds of trouble”, she explains. When she applied for jobs, “companies rejected my résumé without even reading it. They saw my surname and they guessed that I was a Roma woman”, she says.
