Today we visited a women’s leather cooperative and I will say, walking in I did not fully understand what I was about to experience. We actually got to make a leather hand pouch from scratch with the help of the women there, and I am not going to sugarcoat it, it was tiring. My hands were working in ways they are genuinely not used to, my fingers were literally shaking and sore from the scissors and the hand press leather whole puncher. Now I’ve been enlightened and I have a whole new respect for every leather bag I have ever owned or bargained for. But it was also really fun and there was something about holding something at the end that you made yourself that felt really personal in a way that buying something off a rack just does not. The women at the cooperative handle the making and the selling themselves, which means they keep most of the profit without a middleman taking a cut, and that structure reminded me a lot of what we learned about Anou. Both cooperatives are built around the same core idea, empowering women artisans to sustain their livelihoods through their craft while actually seeing the financial reward for their work. The difference is that Anou focuses on rug weaving and has that 80/20 profit split built into its model, while this cooperative is rooted in leather work and puts the women directly in charge of the whole process from making to selling. Same mission, different craft, and both doing something really important.

Now here is where I have to be honest with myself, and I think this is the most interesting part. Ethically I 100% prefer the cooperative model. It brings real visibility to the hard work these women put into every single piece and actually helps them build a profitable living from something they are genuinely skilled at. But then I think about standing in the souk, successfully bargaining a gorgeous leather bag down to a price that made me want to do a little victory walk, and I cannot pretend that feeling does not exist. There is something about the energy of bargaining, the back and forth, the moment it clicks, that is just fun in a way that is hard to explain. And I think that tension I just described is exactly why fast fashion is such a massive thing all over the world. At the end of the day people know better, but when something is cheaper and more accessible and right in front of you, the ethical consideration tends to quietly take a back seat. I learned that about myself this week and I am not entirely proud of it, but I think being honest about it is more useful than pretending I always make the right call.

Yesterday in Marrakech did not help my case at all, because I spent a full day in the souks there and somehow managed to spend way more money than I planned and I regret nothing. Marrakech was only a short stay, but it hit different, there was something about the energy of the city that actually reminded me of home. The modernism of it, the city life, the pace of everything moving around you, it gave me a little taste of Philadelphia in the middle of Morocco. We also did our research after seeing so much Coco Chamelle shirt that it got us cackling and turned out the brand is specific to Marrakech. So naturally we bought matching shirts as a joke and a memory of the trip, and naturally we spent the rest of the morning making TikToks in them. Short trip but fun times.