‘ The second annual festival of FREE DIY workshops to remake
/ recycle / reimaging / reinvent clothes and our relationship to them.’
I stumbled across this 6 part series of workshops that took
place at JEM fabric store in SoHo … http://houseofjem.blogspot.com/ Organised and lead by Michael DiPietro, a Parsons fashion
graduate with a passion for Bargello Needlepoint and Sustainability.
This was a collaboration between Michael and Culture Push http://culturepush.org/ Which is an art
organisation that helps fund and coordinate projects, workshops and symposiums
for the Arts. Everything was free, even the materials- all you had to do was
turn up which attracted a wide range of people all with different abilities and
interests.
I made it to the darning, bargello and the finale symposium,
unfortunately I don’t have any holes in anything at the moment- but I got a lot
of strange looks on the subway with my needlepoint!
The symposium with Pascale Gatzen, Glenn Marla and Otto von
Busch explored the idea of consumers and designers creating a sustainable
fashion system. Pascale is a Parsons professor as well as an artist and
designer who brought up some interesting ideas about worth. Glenn
Marla is a performance artist and shopgirl at Re/Dress, a plus-size thrift
store in Brooklyn, NY, She was very inspiring and reiterated how we have to be
designing sustainable fashion for the masses- not just those who can afford it
or fit into it. Otto is founder of the brand and research project
>Self_Passage<, an open-source project investigating empowerment through
fashion hacktivism.
It finalised in a hand made quilt (lovingly made by Michael)
which we all contributed out ideas to create a flow chart. This was a wonderful
series of workshops- I learnt many skills and the symposium opened up a lot of
questions and ideas for me. VERY INSPIRING!
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