Let’s Fix Fashion with a gentle revolution
Turn old clothing into fashion and help save the planet.
Re-edit 13 may 2017 and fall 2019 for Extinction Rebellion.
Dream: Oscars 2020. Several A-list stars wear the same dress as last year. Only difference, there’s an FF patch on it. #Fixfashion
LET’S FIX FASHION!
THE CAUSE! Fashion is the 2nd most polluting industry on the planet! Let’s fix it and bring back its pollution with 1/5 to 1/3!
THE PLAN: Become part of the new Fix Fashion culture! Join in ‘refashioning’ old clothing, buy organic and enduring.
With the FF symbol, homemade or bought, on your clothing you make it the new best brand of fashion for the world. Help nature to flourish, while you fly.
How I came to the idea.
I always dreamed of being creative in all fields. I always wondered, what could a guy with limited fashion sense add to fashion? Then this idea hit my head: I could start a conceptual brand that helps protect the environment. The fastest easiest, cheapest brand in the world. It also adds fun to fashion activism. And with building a small ‘industry’ I could help spread the culture and message and have an income help fund further actions, like Fixing Fashion contests.
Welcome to ff. #fixfashion
Why the Fashion Industry needs Fixing.
Check here some shocking numbers:
The first list showed facts, about money spend, waste and soot added to the environment. Now go deeper down this rabbit hole to find how terrifyingly dangerous the fashion industry actually currently is:
And now slowly the news spreads how even washing your clothes, especially nylon and other plastics, damages the seas and food chains.
Our current fashion culture is poisonous for life. Time for a change!
The Concept: ff to (help) fix fashion.
How does it work?
Putting an FF on your (old or second hand) clothing is both a statement and, in the same time, the action we seek.
Everyone knows the peace symbol and what it stands for. You can buy it in many different shapes and help spread the message. The same goes for the FF. Only by wearing an FF on old clothing or Fixed Fashion you are already making a difference. You say, I help fix the fashion problem on our planet.
All you need to do is add the logo to all your outdated fashion items. You can spray, draw, button or stitch a patch with the ff logo on any fashion item that can still be worn or used. Clothing, Shoes, Bags can all be FF’ed. You can also refashion, repair old clothing with a small fashion twist. Adding small additions, tweeking old clothing must be the real fashion for our future*.
*)If you’re inventive, help discover this: How to tweek/repair/upgrade your old clothing so, that it becomes fashionable again? We need examples from all over the world showing this is possible and fun. (Update 2019: It seems Extinction Rebellion is taking the lead in this.)
Use the logo as statement to wear stuff out of fashion. Use the logo as a fashion statement against fashion pollution and consumerism. And last but not least: the fashion industry shouts how unique you’ll be in their clothing. It’s not true, millions around the world may wear exactly the same H&M shirt. Be really unique in how you adapt your old wear, or had it done by a local FF artist.
Free to use!
The concept falls under creative commons. Yes, you can start making your own version and not have us breathing in your neck. To be as strong a logo as the peace symbol it must belong to us all. The message is more important than the profit. That might confuse some other industries ;)
Weren’t you supposed to try to conquer a market? No, we want to spread an idea, to changes the global fashion culture! Businesses must serve a function for the whole! And if not needed anymore, be prepared to die or change. Oil industry are you listening? Please become a clean energy industry and stop plastics in clothing! We are already eating the result in our fish!
Is buying a patch not more garbage? Yes it is, but, if it prevents people buying much more clothing, the latest fashion, the most polluting fashion, and helps spread the concept, then it’s totally worth it, until the whole fashion industry is changing big time! (ha, not for sale yet)
Then why buy our Patches? When you do buy ours, you’ll support this and other initiatives that can help nature flourish and people fly. Thus through buying ours you’ll help with other concepts and messages to make a difference.
WHO AND HOW YOU CAN HELP/BENEFIT FROM THIS:
Fashion Designers (looking for work), start designing and showing off your ‘refashioning’ of old or second hand clothing on Instagram and Facebook.
Clothing Factories (waiting for orders), get your hands on piles of second hand and turn into a fixing fashion industry, refashioning what you get in. This will make you personally more creative and versatile.
People looking for work, become a fashion fixer or FF artist. Start a 2nd clothing and refashioning shop, where people can also bring the outdated favorite clothing. Fix it with (fixing workshops) and or for them, to a new fashion statement.
Salespeople of second hand clothing, you may freely add it to any second hand clothing, helping your business becoming part of the biggest (and hopefully lasting) fashion trend in the world.
Conscious people, show and act in a very simple way, that you are willing to act on your principles. Rewear old clothing with a FF or have it refashioned.
Selfies, Instagrammers, Vloggers and other visual folk, add the ff within your programs. Wear it. Show it. Help Fix Fashion.#FixFashion
TV anchors, news readers, weathermen, show presenters, wear the same clothing twice or even longer in a row, each time with a bigger FF on it.
Poor people, wearing ff turns lack of new clothing into a fashionable statement about caring for the planet. You’re not poor! You care!
Clothing repair people, put the logo in your window, as the upgraders of old clothes back to life. Study how adding small extra’s could be the real fashion of the future.
Children laughed at at school, for wearing clothes they got from their older siblings, with an FF you wear clothing with a vision and help the world. Shows you have more brains that the bullies who laugh at your poverty.
Conscious magazines make your own photoshoot, with people wearing outdated clothing with stylish FF’s on it. Make a FF upgrade contest.
Hippies, you made the love sign world famous, now add the ff to actively challenge an industry. Be creative in shape, design and colours! Have fun.
Sports people, gymnasts, dancers, don’t be trendy in what you wear. Show that your body understands its health is also dependent on a healthy world around it. (Millions, runners too, die already yearly from air pollution! and or from cancers due to nano plastic particles from the washing of your trendy yoga pants or any nylon clothing that ended up in the fish on your plate.)
ff is a statement, not a show of luxury. What’s luxury anyway, other than an idea. After all, isn’t Gucci also just a bag made in China? So think before you buy.
Question: How to prevent clothing makers, to add the ff to new clothing? We think our CC-copyright allows use for profit by 2nd hand sales people, and repair shops and such. CC can’t exclude newly made clothing (yet). But, show public outrage towards all who find it in a shop on new clothing made look old! Kill that brand!
So! Become a fashion activist!
Back to my dream to see one or more major Hollywood actresses wear the same dress to the Oscars as last year, wearing the ff logo largely all over it. That would make a story and statement more than worth mentioning! So if you know one forward this story to her, and or all your friends who have more than enough clothing in their collection to rediscover!
Also, start applying the ff on all your outdated fashion and accessories. And if you need new stuff and have some money: start buying organic all the way! This’ll help pressure the we-like-looks-but-don’t-care-about-the price-for-the-world industry to go totally organic and sturdy. Jobs and profits may be lost, yet in the end we all benefit when we buy way less clothing of the kind that doesn’t pollute, doesn’t wear out fast. Fashion workers may all become local craftspeople improving old clothing to a new life.
How sturdy can good clothing be? I’m wearing now, for over 10 years(!), each spring and fall a Swiss Army coat. It was made in 1924! And it somehow made it to a second hand store in Amsterdam, probably stored away all those years. Only now it starts to look a bit worn out (even after several repairs). That is really sturdy.
FF is the logo brand, that must help to push to fashion industry to make more of healthy, sturdy, organic clothing! Because only when the whole clothing industry makes sense, the ff brand loses it.
- ) Imagine how clothing repair people could add colours, prints, extra pockets to sturdy clothing, to give it a fashion feel that changes yearly, thus making them the heart of the industry. Where the most fashionable and the best old clothing tweeks of the year go viral, making their inventors famous.
By fabricating FF patches we will help spread the message and trend out across the world!
I’m now designing patches, buttons, hangers with the version of the logo, for males, females, children, outdoors, classic and other looks. Here’s examples:
Can you help us?
(this bit may change as the concept evolves) That’s why we are looking for help with the design of clothing patches, badges and labels and start an online shop. And some fashion designers who’d like to play with this idea, where and how to best place badges, and upgrade stuff out of fashion with a few simple tweeks, like our badges back into it. We’ll do a fashion shoot as soon as we have enough materials and budget, or volunteers with a camera and looks. :)
If you are really interested then here’s a group that helps create this ‘brand’, or symbol. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1889292261319178/ Much work has to be done https://www.facebook.com/groups/1823221174672132/
# We need to prepare a press release, preferably in many countries at the same time. And many people ready to launch it at the same time. (date is not set yet, for this I need to consult start up team)
# We need pictures that we can use for the campaign, like you wearing it on old clothing. ff placed in the window of clothing and shoes repair shops. An old fashioned bag with a brand new ff label. Etc.
# We need a alternative fashion shoots, preferably in the catagories: youth, a separate one for girls and boys who love hobbying with clothing (or a school class going wild on this), summer women, classy women, rough men, city men. Added series might be hippies, proud homeless (the newer the patches look the better), elderly, Shoots in Africa, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and South East Asia. All published on instagram and or published in green magazines, like the Optimist, Happinez, in NL.
# We need a website with a webshop. Someone already shouted she wants to start building. What should be included?
# We need a sales and production department, having no clue how big this is going to be. Could be anything between locally and GLOBAL.
#We need our patches to be a much organic, non polluting as possible. Though I do prefer Iron On models to start with (what’s with the glue?), as people tend to be too easy nowadays. How to create them such?
What more do we need?
# The cooperative company putting it into the world, where everyone working for it, has shares as well. Name: Flourish&Fly F&F. But you may call FF Flowers&Families, Fix&Fun, Furries&Fish, etc, whatever fits your vibe.
