The Cerise Foundation is a non-profit humanist enterprise dedicated to the long-term advancement of the human race through progressive work in fields such as art, literature, science, and communication.

Current Projects

• Ethical Fashion

Ethical Fashion Initiatives

The Cerise Foundation's new Ethical Fashion Initiatives (EFI) program supports unique projects which develop and promote new ethical sustainable practices in the fashion industry.

EFI Phase One — Documentation

The Documentation Initiative will record the hand movements of dozens of veteran New York City garment workers using 3D imaging technology.It is an effort to preserve ancient human knowledge about how to manipulate a variety of common and uncommon materials.

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• EFI Phase One

The Cerise Foundation inherited part of its mission from another non-profit organization called Save The Garment Center, which ceased operations in 2019.For over a decade, Save The Garment Center kept a vigilant watch for changes in New York City zoning laws that could have resulted in the eviction of hundreds garment indusrty businesses and thousands of garment workers losing their jobs.It was a defiant mission, a community mission, and ultimately a very human mission.

Ethical Fashion Initiatives

Phase One — The Documentation Initiative

In the New York City Garment Center, retiring garment workers are leaving the industry without passing on vital skills to younger generations.

The Immediate Need

The garment worker information drain is a growing problem that will result in a catastrophic failure to retain high-value technological and craft skills knowledge in the commercial textile crafts community if not addressed soon.Vast generational knowledge passed down from craftsperson to craftsperson over thousands of years is being lost in the face of a changing business environment.

minute movements can have a dramatic effect

Value Generated

Detailed information on how skilled craftspeople manipulate fabric will be useful to future generations, whether they continue employing manual techniques or build automation to apply the data we collect at scale.

stereoscopic video camera

Our Approach

The Documentation Initiative seeks to record the hand movements of veteran garment workers using 3D video imaging technology while they explain the processes being demonstrated to an interviewer.These recordings will then be made available to the public as an open-source library.

Benefit To The Foundation

The open-source library will be available for public viewing, but enterprise businesses will need a commercial license to exploit the data we collect, providing an ongoing long-term revenue stream for The Cerise Foundation.

Combined equipment and production costs:

$41,520.49

Deliverables:

minimum of 25 content packagespackages are recorded hand movements for an individual garment worker combined with an associated knowledge transfer interview

Why Us?

We have special access to New York City's Garment Center thanks to pre-existing relationships in the neighborhood and the industry at large.See legacy.

Continuation

The equipment can be reused to produce more content with lower marketing costs.

For 25 additional content packages, the total added cost would be $26,633.88.

Over the next three years, we would like to record with 200-300 garment workers for this project, which will require us to raise between $262,964.65 (for 200) and $389,504.17 (for 300).