Designer Abhishek Dutta to launch clothing brand made by prison inmates

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jul 8, 2019

Designer Abhishek Dutta has created a clothing brand named “Parole” which is set to launch this month and is produced by a group of inmates from Indian prisons. 

The clothing brand is ready to launch this month and is accompanied by a promotional photoshoot in which the inmates themselves are the models in a move to break the taboo of prisoners revealing their identity, TNN reported. A group of 40 male inmates from the Presidency Central Correctional Home and 12 female inmates from the Alipore Women’s Correctional Home have been working on producing Dutta’s designs since 2017. 

Parole will first launch online and is currently in talks to launch in several offline multi-brand retail outlets. The brand’s debut collection will feature a mix of traditional and western wear split into four groups. A formal wear line, a prints line, denim traditional wear line, and fusion wear line will all feature and were all created by the group of inmates. 

“It’s a sustainable label, which has menswear, womenswear, pret line, Western, Indo-Western with lots of stripes, checks and interesting prints,” Dutta told TNN about the brand. Dutta hopes to scale up the project to other prisons in the future. 

“The launch of Parole is a unique initiative, where the affordable range of designer wear is made by the inmates within the walls of Presidency Central Correctional Home,” said West Bengal’s Director of correctional services Arun Kumar Gupta. “These inmates have been trained by Abhishek Dutta and his team and are now skilled to make high-end designer clothes.”