Kenya is certainly at the centre of the buzz around ethical fashion right now. In her piece for the Telegraph in March, Tamsin Blanchard spoke of mainstream fashion designers’ exploits there around this trend: Suno, Jessica Ogden (for Asos Africa), Edun and most recently, Vivienne Westwood.

Launching the Ethical Fashion Africa were three designs of bags made out of environmentally sustainable materials such as cotton canvas, woven plastic bags, recycled brass produced by Westwood via Nairobi-based social enterprise Ethical Fashion Africa, which coordinate the work of community screen-printers, beaders, tailors, metal-workers and weavers. It is designed to support and empower with skills women living in two of Nairobi’s slum areas Kibera and Korogocho.

The bags were revealed during her Paris fashion show in September 2010 and sold out within days of arriving in store. The results of a second collaboration appeared on the Paris catwalk in March 2011.

Dame Westwood made her first visit to Kenya last month on invitation by the UN agency, the International Trade Centre who endorses this initiative. Over the four days she was there she visited the Ethical Fashion production hub in Nairobi’s Godown Arts Centre and conducted capacity-building workshops

We can also expect to witness some of Vivienne’s visual inspiration from that visit in her forth-coming ad campaign.  Westwood, along with acclaimed photographer, Juergen Teller (both pictured above with model, Elsie) chose the Godown Art Centre as the shoot location for the campaign which will feature Kenyan supermodel, Ajuma and local discoveries, Elsie and Sonnietta. “This is not charity, this is work…” is the mantra for the British designer’s mantra for this project, which will see yet another run as Westwood has increased her order for the next season.

Have a browse through more of the pictures from Vivienne Westwood’s visit to Kenya below.