Carmina Campus is the brand founded in 2006 by Ilaria Venturini Fendi creating handbags, jewels and furniture out of reused materials. It is a project of sustainable creativity  proposing small but effective solutions to cope with the present crises,  in the belief that it cannot be successfully dealt  with without considering its threefold aspect, economical, social and environmental.

Ilaria’s know-how comes from her background as designer of high quality accessories, which has proved to be an added-value to the Carmina Campus production, mostly made of numbered one-of-a-kind pieces. Reused and repurposed materials make the peculiarity of these products made with premium quality craftsmanship. The individual hand-written tag of each piece provide a detailed list of the materials used.

Working only with already-existing materials - either living their second life or unused but out of production/consumption cycles - is the core philosophy of Carmina Campus and the result of Ilaria’s choice to create her own sustainable and socially engaged design project. Carmina Campus collections are not seasonal, but rather grouped according to a common material or concept and new editions of the same styles are sometime re-designed employing different materials. Years ago Carmina Campus started a working project in Africa and in 2009 began its collaboration with the ITC (International Trade Centre, a joint UN and WTO agency that addresses poverty through trade-driven projects). With the support of the training processes provided by Italian artisans who collaborate with Carmina Campus, a 100% made in Africa collection designed with locally sourced materials has been successfully launched and is presently sold world-wide. NOT CHARITY, JUST WORK is the shared mantra of this project.