INTERVENTION: Monozygotics x Controra Fashion Club

I carried out a creative experiment in collaboration with an emerging ethical and sustainable brand, Monozygotics. I gathered audio-visual and written content created by the designers to promote their latest collection, ‘Ambrosia Salad,’ material that I then sent out to the participants (around 20 young consumers aged 19-39). The latter were all invited to reflect on their personal relationships with fashion, guided by written prompts, and then create their own original content inspired by the brand’s storytelling (e.g., a poem, short story, haiku, reflective piece, drawing, etc.). Evidence of this can be found on this blog and on social media. The main objectives: 

• For the brand: to carry out customer research on their behalf, analysing how people react to their current storytelling; to provide them with user-generated content that can be utilised for their marketing campaigns, and to engage with their community; to help them reach out to more people, showing what slow fashion can also look like, investigating what preconceived ideas people have of slow fashion.
• For the participants/consumers: to introduce young consumers to an ethical brand with a strong, playful aesthetic; to allow consumers to become storytellers, engaging and interacting with a brand and its core values; to test whether a slow fashion brand’s storytelling can be a source of inspiration, allowing consumers to reflect on their own relationships with fashion, particularly slow fashion.

INTERVENTION: An online event with two emerging brands (Monozygotics & IBEAM Fashion)

As a second intervention, and result of the research I’d been carrying out, I planned an online event for emerging designers that took place on Tuesday (August 23rd) between 5pm and 6pm. The purpose of this event was for emerging designers and young entrepreneurs to meet each other and discuss the joys and pains of setting up a business, plus what opportunities exist out there that some might know about and others might not.

Thinking about and planning this intervention helped me define my research and focus for the following months: what I wanted to achieve, who I wanted to help, and who had to be involved. This was the very moment when I could finally envision the future of Controra Fashion Club: a platform for emerging fashion creatives, to create an inclusive fashion community and show young consumers that slow fashion can be fun.

INTERVENTION: Upcycling&Bedazzling!

Last Spring I hosted a successful upcycling workshop that was not only an occasion for the participants to share ideas on how to instil new life into old clothes, but also to form a small community within my college.

• 10 participants (all UAL students)
• C&E room
• From 6pm to 7.30pm

Choosing upcycling for my first intervention had pros and cons. On the one hand, it was a safe space and fun occasion for all the participants to share their opinions on shopping, playing with and bedazzling clothes. On the other hand, some people were more focused on the activity to pay attention to and answer my questions. A participant also mentioned how hard it is for them to talk whilst doing something else, which is a fair point.