Life after the escape: From Moria to “Vogue”

Shafi Qias fought her way up from the Moria refugee camp to become a designer. In her Athens apartment she sews fashion that is supposed to show “that borders are fluid” – and was already featured in “Vogue”.

An unusual photo shoot in a small park in Athens: Urban summer fashion – combined with Asian tradition. Shafi Qias designed these creations. She is 35 years old and lived in the Moria refugee camp for a long time. She was born in Afghanistan.

She has had an infinitely long journey with her family. But now she has achieved an important goal: her own fashion collection. “It was so nice! I feel so good now. The models looked so good and were so nice,” she enthuses. “I’ve always dreamed that this would happen.”

In a small city apartment, Qias tailors her designs and does sewing work. She learned that from her mother at the age of 14. Today it secures her livelihood. But the young woman wants to earn more than just money with her clothes: she wants to tell a story. “This dress is so important to me because I combined two cultures in one piece of clothing,” she says. “The pattern comes from my grandparents’ homeland, Tajikistan. It has long sleeves, but with a slit. And one side is longer than the other. The same below. So the Europeans have a short dress, the people from my homeland a long one . ”

Tailoring finance the rent

Thousands of people from different cultures flee to the Greek islands or the mainland every year. Many meet on Victoria Square in Athens during the day. Shafi initially shared this fate – she didn’t speak Greek, was unemployed, had no home.

But she had talent and strength enough to get ahead. Others have been here for years, like a boy from Afghanistan. “We came to Greece two years ago, but I can’t go to school. I’m learning English with YouTube, but I’ve stopped doing that and am learning German,” he tells us.

There is little help, even for those who are granted asylum. Greece itself is in a serious economic crisis, and young people cannot find work. Some manage to get their own room, but that is hardly possible without a job. The young designer Shafi Qias has succeeded: she finds a small apartment in one of the colorful quarters of Athens and can pay the rent through her tailoring. Moria is behind her. “It was extremely traumatic. When we were planning to go to Europe, I had dreams of Europe,” she recalls. “But after three months in Moria, I thought I was no longer alive.”

A mentoring program helped get started

Living in peace and being creative is her lifelong dream. And the organization “Dila” in Athens helped her with this. Kasia Maciejowska supports Qias as a mentor and helps her to stand on her own two feet. With success: the first collection was already shown in the Greek “Vogue”. “‘Dila’ pursues two approaches: to support the women themselves – and we also find it important to anchor the aesthetics, voices and visions of migrants and non-Europeans in the culture and to give them a platform,” says Maciejowska. The next goal of the organization is to build its own business and brand.

Shafi Qias took her chance in Greece. She cannot say whether it will one day be home. In any case, the young designer does not want to forget her origins and her past, but rather to take them with her into her new life – and shows this in the colors and shapes of her fashion, which connects both cultures. “We can live together in real life too, we can work together and shape the world together,” she says. “That’s why I want to show with my fashion that the boundaries are fluid.” Anyone who experiences it knows that it will not lose sight of its goal.

You can see these and other reports on Sunday, July 4th at 7:20 pm in the ARD “Weltspiegel”.