Founder of Sophia Costas and co-founder of the NGO, AZAHAR Foundation, Mia Berglund creates fair-trade, hand-crafted, sustainable scarves. Opening her first store in Denmark, Mia transformed her love of fashion into a source for creating jobs and education opportunities throughout Asia and Central America.
Support Mia Berglund’s fair-trade cause with Sweet Lemon and Sophia Costas’ discount! Pick out your favorite scarf and for wearable scarf inspiration, follow Sophia Costas on , , and !
But before you start pinning, discover more about Mia Berglund’s scarf collection, Sophia Costas, and yoga and arts conflict resolution programs with the AZAHAR Foundation below.
1 Cotton Leaves Scarf // 2 Modal Dots Scarf // 3 Cotton Zebra Scarf //
4 Wool Moose Scarf // 5 Wool Elephant Scarf
Tell me a little bit about your background. I know you opened your first store in 1994. What lead you to fashion and sustainable fashion?
Mia : I started out by opening a store. I traveled a lot in Asia and I was seeing a lot of what was going on through non-profit work. I wanted to help support those families. We help families in Nepal find work to sustain a living.
How did you create the concept for the AZAHAR Foundation?
Mia: I practice yoga here in New York and Estelle (AZAHAR co-founder) and I met here. She was working with non-profit organizations. I was going to Cambodia very much at the time. I asked her if she wanted to come with me there and teach yoga at the orphanage that I worked at. We started up a program in yoga and teaching English. It is essential for them to know English. They need English to get any type of job. If they don’t have that, they can’t get anywhere. At this point, we have kids from the orphanage going abroad to Japan and Thailand and doing teacher training.
In Cambodia, we teach English and yoga, but in Mexico and other countries, we teach yoga and arts.
What do you have planned for the future?
Mia: I’m doing a small vintage custom collection that is going to come out at the end of April. It’s all vintage prints. We are doing a new children’s scarf. We are continuing to work with Nepal. I’m expanding into more men’s and children’s scarves.
If you could give your younger self advice on starting a business, what would it be?
Mia: I definitely feel everyone should look into conscious brands—First being environmentally friendly and working with non-profit organizations. Make sure you are helping people in other parts of the world. They are so underpaid and they live in shacks. If you have a chance to go over and see for your own eyes, I think that everyone who saw that would want to make a change. People are complaining about prices getting higher, but they have to be higher to pay workers a livable salary. People who want to shop at department stores should know that they are supporting the big factories.
Lucky for Sweet Lemon readers, Sophia Costas is offering 10% your entire purchase! Just enter SLM10 at check out.
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Photography by Mateo Garcia
