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 Yet the Cuban designer must rummage through
trash bins and scour the sidewalks of Havana for scraps of wood
and obsolete electrical devices to manufacture them.
In Communist-run Cuba, designers of clothes and household goods
say the absence of wholesale stores as well as the expense and
scarcity of raw materials have forced them to get creative. Many
turn to repurposing and recycling the materials at hand.
These pioneers of the island's fledgling private sector say they
are turning a competitive disadvantage into an asset, while
yielding unique, ecologically-friendly designs.
"It's not easy to get the materials so we have to adapt and
improvise a lot," said Alejo, 37, whose lamps contain salt
crystals. "Some 50-60 percent is recycled material."
Alejo said he asks carpenters for their leftover scraps and uses
the frames of discarded windows and doors in order to make the
wooden bases for his lamps. He also salvages the switches, plugs
and cables from old electrical devices.
"They are extremely expensive, and there isn't a regular supply
in stores," he said, adding his company Luzvi still must import
some inputs - like lightbulbs with a softer glow than Cuba's
starkly white, energy-saving ones.
The new lamps sell for between $25 and $50, a relatively hefty
sum in a country where the average monthly state salary is
around $30. Lower input costs would enable Alejo to cut prices,
he said.
The government has allowed more Cubans to set up their own
businesses in recent years as part of its plan to update its
ailing, Soviet-style economy and cut the bloated state payroll.
The number of Cuba's self-employed more than tripled in six
years to above 500,000 by the end of 2016, official data shows.
Some entrepreneurs complain, however, that the government has not
followed through on certain reforms. For example, the country's
small, private businesses still do not have access to the wholesale
market.
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Raw materials are often in short supply and expensive, although
Havana puts that down to the half-century-old U.S. trade blockade.
Caridad Limonta, whose family firm Procle sells women's apparel and
home goods, said new textiles were costly so she mostly bought
clothes or hotel curtains and sheets at state-run, second-hand
stores and recycled them.
"I transform trousers for example into bags," said the 60-year-old
entrepreneur. "The backs of shirts don't damage as much so I cut
them, stick them together and make patchwork quilts."
Limonta said Cubans are not in the habit of throwing things away,
and find new uses for them instead. At Procle, shoulder pads become
sponges for the kitchen, while old curtains are reinvented as
tablecloths.
While Limonta said she wished it were easier to buy textiles, she
also does not want Cuba to adopt the same kind of "fast fashion"
prevalent in consumerist economies where clothes are cheap but often
disposable, generating trash.
In the business district of Vedado, just around the corner from
Procle, is the Vintage Bazar, a shop that refurbishes old lamps as
well as designs quirky new ones with anything from plumbing pipes to
water bottles.
"In other countries you would throw away the lamp and buy a new
one," said designer Gretel Serrano, 32, who is currently
refurbishing a large batch of lamps for a hotel. "Here people bring
them to the shop and we restore them like new."
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, editing by G Crosse)
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