Ground Zero in Athens Provides Refuge for Londoner Fleeing Costs

Londoner Eleni Kyriacou is building her fashion brand on the ruins of Greece’s textile industry.

The 34-year-old designer moved to Athens in the midst of the debt crisis that shrank the country’s economy by a quarter and put more than a million Greeks out of work. The downturn that decimated the garment industry as banks froze credit is now providing Kyriacou with highly-skilled, low-cost pattern cutters and knit-makers that her hometown of London can’t match.