Wear the Peace
Ethical Fashion Designers Murad Nofal and Mustafa Mabruk create important dialogue through streetwear.
As children of refugees, founders Murad Nofal and Mustafa Mabruk saw the direct outcome of the refugee crisis. In 2016 they sat in a garage and tried to figure out how they could make a difference. They came up with the brand,
Wear The Peace, and made it a statement to ensure that the brand sent loving messages, spread awareness to issues around the world, and gave back to the humans who need it most.
Tell us about your story:
My name is Murad Nofal, I’m 27 years old from Chicago, Illinois and one of the founders of Wear The Peace. In the summer of 2014, I visited the world’s largest refugee camp at the time, The Zaatari refugee camp. I was visiting my family in Jordan as I did every summer and my cousins at the time were fundraising and buying items for refugee families in the camp such as water bottles, towels, clothing, food, etc. I witnessed people in horrendous living conditions all because their country was torn apart by war. The Zaatari camp, at the time, was quickly transforming towards becoming a permanent living space for many of the refugees in the camp. My grandparents have lived in a refugee camp in Jordan since 1975 and the camp eventually turned into a permanent residency, an area where supermarkets, barbershops, and grocery stores began to pop up making the living condition normal for the residents. I kept contemplating how this could happen in today’s time, and I questioned “why do humans have to live like this? Even though I knew about the unjust world we live in, seeing it in person was a whole different story. In 2016 I got together with one of my good friends, Mustafa, and sat in my garage and brainstormed how we could make a difference. We are both children of refugees and we both saw the direct outcome of the refugee crisis. After weeks of conversations, we came up with the brand, Wear The Peace, and made it a statement to ensure that the brand sent loving messages, spread awareness to issues around the world, and gave back to the humans who need it most. Wear The Peace is a brand that believes “Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change.” Wear The Peace encapsulated this idea of “together we make change” into the brand by creating their Buy One Give One initiative and The All Profits initiative, which allows customers to directly make an impact on another human’s life just by purchasing from the brand. To date, we’ve been able to donate over 92,000 articles of brand new clothing to people in need around the world where new clothing is a luxury. We’ve also been able to donate over $42,688 to different humanitarian causes such as sending girls in conflict areas to school, feeding families in famine-stricken countries, building water wells, and much more.
What would you say is your design aesthetic?
I think what we try to do is mix streetwear and loving messages together to make pieces that people want to wear out. My goal has been to always make this brand a streetwear brand but it becomes tough when it also needs to have a message. We have some pieces that are super minimal and some that are out there. Our goal at the end of the day is to create pieces with a message and a reminder to fight for justice, protecting one’s peace, giving people a voice, and being the change.
How do your designs reflect your own experiences?
I’ve always been passionate about speaking out, even before starting the brand. It was with my own group of friends and community but I always voiced my opinion and did my own research about injustice around the world. The pieces that we drop are messages that we think the world needs to hear and be reminded of.
What projects are you working on and what is significant about them?
All of our projects that we do always have an initiative and trying to brainstorm a product with an initiative is always a fun process. For example we came out with a necklace that we designed to look like a water drop with the initiative that if purchased, this necklace donates 1500 gallons of clean drinking water to people in need. This has helped us donate over 2.5 million gallons of clean drinking water just from one initiative. We have a project that I'm super excited about that’s in the works. We’re creating a new line of products called “Peace Charms” which are sterling silver charms for bracelets. Each charm will have a different design and each design will have different initiative. We haven’t designed too much jewelry as of recently so this has been really exciting for us here.
What would you say are the necessary steps to creating an ethical, socially responsible and sustainable business?
Be someone who actually cares for those fights instead of just a brand that wants to slap those buzz words on to their websites. Caring for people, caring for the environment, and caring for the betterment of communities all around the world is a vital necessity in creating a brand that also cares for those things. For us, and many companies who care, it’s costly to be ethical and socially responsible. For example, last year, we were able to donate over $150,000 to humanitarian causes whether it was for new clothing or sending girls to school yet there were months where my business partner and I were not getting paid. We’ve accepted this though and we know and believe that financial gains will never be enough of a purpose to keep working on any project or business. Our happiest moments are when we get to visit the communities we’re helping out or when a charity sends us a video of the people we’ve helped with a new water well or food packages. These are the moments we long for. Even when it comes to what we pay as a business for our products, it is costly. Most fashion companies take the less expensive route and have products made in sweatshops where people are getting paid little to no money in horrendous work environments. We did extensive research on where we get our blanks and chose a company that prides themselves on an anti-sweatshop movement and clean energy. Their sewing floor creates almost no landfill, so everything they can’t turn into an article of clothing is either recycled or repurposed. All of our clothing is screen printed and embroidered right here in Chicago Illinois at Culture Studio. It was important for us to choose a manufacturer that we can meet with in person and one that focuses on good health, safety, and fair compensation both on the blanks level and the production level. At the end of the day, we did this because we care about people and how they are treated and I think that’s the most important step when it comes to creating a brand that holds those same values.
What do you feel is your biggest accomplishment to date with the brand?
There’s been many big accomplishments within the brand but my top one is the education we give and how that’s impacted people’s view on the world. We use all of our social media to spread awareness about issues around the world that many might not know are happening. I believe these posts spark initiative and we’ve seen this with the amount of people that go and donate to charities that we post about. We always do our due diligence when posting a charity by checking their tax records and financial statements to see where their money is being spent and we’ve given light to some amazing charities that actually care about the world. Many charities spend their money in reckless and greedy ways and I think it’s a huge accomplishment that we’ve been able to educate people about how to go ahead and help people the right way with the right organizations. I think these posts have also helped our community become more grateful for the things they have. We get caught up with so many things that we sometimes forget that the mind we have to facilitate thought, the eyes we have to even read this article, are huge blessings that not everyone has. Do date, through our Collection for Palestine, we have raised almost $1mil!
Instagram: Wearthepeace
Website: www.wearthepeace.com
“Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change.”