AIM

The aim was to help small and medium sized businesses to find effective ways to show their work. The conventional ways of showing fashion collections – through trade shows or fashion shows – are often not suited to businesses who have a story to tell about their purpose or their process behind the collection, or who want to demonstrate a system rather than simply sell a product. Fashion shows are often wasteful, inefficient, expensive, and too focused on the superficial without offering ways for press, buyers and stakeholders to find out about materials, the production process, how things are made. They can also have a fixed and outmoded idea of what constitutes ‘fashion’ today. With EU legislation around EPR and greenwashing, it is vital that brands are given effective ways to talk about and show their work in ways that are transparent, honest and open.

As many innovative brands move to a more circular way of making fashion, from the materials that are disassembled, upcycled and reused, to different ways of accessing fashion by rentals, cocreation, or by designing systems for keeping textiles in a closed loop, or repairing pieces to keep them in use for the longest time possible, so too, the industry needs to find new ways to showcase the work that emphasises some of these points as important to the responsible customer.

Transparent supply chains and ways of working mean that there is a lot to communicate about the way things are made, where they are made, and why such points are important. We need to move to a more open and accessible way for designers, makers and businesses to show their work.

As Orsola de Castro, founder of Fashion Revolution and Fashion Revolution Open Studio says: “Fashion Revolution Open studio stands for innovation in showcasing, radical transparency, and a belief that to challenge the system, we need to champion the radicals. Fashion is changing, and emerging designers are looking for different ways to express their creativity and reach their customers. By looking at the people and the processes behind the collections, Fashion Revolution Open Studio creates an intimate thread between the maker and the user.”