Slowly I’m watching D.I.Y transforming it’s position in fashion, in a slightly similar way as good home cooking isn’t considered much less than a restaurant meal. Fashion Reloaded and other D.I.Y design events aren’t unlike private run bistros or dinner-at-home clubs. So maybe Jamie Oliver never showed up at your house, now icon of icons Karl Lagerfeld has designed an outfit for burda style magazine, meaning – patterns to make it yourself. The patterns can also be downloaded from Burda Style for 5 dollars each. Maison Martin Margiela once released an unfinished dress as an open, downloadable pattern and a call to designers to finish the work. But now seeing Karl in the Burda mag, I realize the marriage between D.I.Y and high end is going mainstream.

Variation on the unfinished Margiela dress by Claudia Rosa Lukas

Last June, Pamoyo was one of the 8 designers who gathered in Ljubljana to create the first Openwear collection.

http://openwear.org

My name is Roos and I am the new intern here at Pamoyo! I will be working with Cecilia until the end of January. I am a textile engineering student from Enschede, Holland.

These coming months I will be assisting Cecilia with a lot of things while trying to learn as much as possible. Also I am going to enjoy this fabulous city Berlin together with my girlfriend and my baby cat Herr Karl Heinz

Last year I made a small collection for my study. This is what it looks like (left):

pdf file and svg or eps

If you don’t feel like just giving them away or throwing them (I hope you don’t do that),  rescue them from meaningless waste and suffocation by taking them out of the closet and bringing them to the Fashion Reloaded session on 4th of July 2009.

Fashion Reloaded is all about swapping your old, nice clothes with the old, nice clothes of other people, who also have an overloaded closet. Put in a dress, take out a skirt. Put in the old, take out a new. It’s simple like that.

But Fashion Reloaded is also about restyling. You love this skirt, because it fits so nicely on you, but its style is boring. What a sustainably thinking person would do? Restyle of course! And if you don’t know how to do it, there will be professional fashion designers there for you to help you in refreshing the style of the clothes you no longer use and fashion workshops, for example screen printing, that will teach you how to make and play with clothes.

Swap and Restyle my friends. And in an evening your garderobe gets a new colour and sense.  A new dimension, a new shape. Let the Fashion Reloaded breeze to bring oxygen and a cool aura in your style. If you are not convinced yet to join us in this creative, stylish and amusing swapping and restyling party…yes it’s a party with music and joy…let us share some words with you about Fashion Reloaded philosophy.

By swapping and restyling you reduce waste and you give a second chance to clothes to get a life. This simply means that there is less need for purchasing new clothes and consequently you contribute in the ecological balance, since clothing industry is a great polluter. I hope you know that already. In parallele, you save money! So, you can deal better with the economical crisis and its consequences. But also, beyond the environmental and economical aspect, by restyling you get an extra, highly important for your personal dimension tip. The creation, which amuses your soul and smoothes your spirit. Being sustainable, by having a low cost and creative, stylish life isn’t convincing enough?

I guess it is. So, this Saturday, 4th of July, from 12 to 19 pm, in Karl-Marx Strasse 97-99 Berlin Neukölln, Fashion Reloaded will be on, as part of the “TheKey.To ” international trade fair for sustainable fashion (see post below). See you and your clothes there!

In the pictures  you can enjoy her 3D “Flaming Heart” and the “Rosy Mummy”. Here you can find even more stitchalicious artworks of her…for your eyes only!

Irene, Creative Activist, Spain

Irene is a creative activist, willing to help non-privileged people to have a better quality of life. Been a Psychology student, her focus is their mind and soul, so the way she chooses to act is by providing amusement and nice moments to these people.
The one part of her actions is associated to music. Irene is a musician and part of an activist orchestra, named OCAS (Orquestra de Càmara de Siero ). The other part of her actions is her membership in the board of a  youth association, named LLANERA, which is meant to exist for creative activities addressed to youngsters of the region of Asturias.

She started talking to me about the orchestra project, organised and held by OCAS, which is called VINCULOS that means CONNECTIONS. This name represents the aim of the project, which is to develop connections between Spain and Latin America through music!
It sounds good, don’t you think? Music always sounds good!

Three “Vinculos” have been realised till now. The first one was held in  2005 in Bolivia and Rio de Janeiro, the second one in 2007 in Bolivia again and the last one in Honduras and Guatemala. What they did in these projects is just amazing! Before they set up for their trip, they collected classical musical instruments and music books from people who didn’t use them anymore. They also bought some with their own money, whereas some others were bought with the donations by several organisations. These musical instruments and music books were meant to be donated to Latin Americans, who are musicians already and others who want to become musicians, but they have no money to buy music staff. OCAS was just so kind to give to these people the opportunity to make music!
Apart from the donated materials, one  member of the support crew was repairer of musical instruments, whose mission was to repair broken instruments and to teach the people there how to repair them themselves.
However, OCAS’ actions were not limited only in the donations and repairs. Concerts, meant to be performed in small villages and suburbs, was one of the main missions. In these concerts, the activist musicians of OCAS-Irene was one of them- were performing with local orchestras, producing a mixed sound of classic and traditional music, full of energy and feelings.
OCAS had also the sensitivity to provide a kind of education on music to children and others who were interested through workshops and didactic concerts. For the workshops, they were using both classical and traditional instruments, but also instant improvised instruments, like for example kitchenware, and here the music comes!

Irene says that “The people in these areas are forgotten by their government. We wanted to help these children and these people there to feel that they are interesting and valuable, that somebody cares about them, that they have our support. People like it and they get happy. It is just amazing to talk to children and hearing them say that they are happy!”.
Irene also spoke about the favourite song of the children in Bolivia, which was not one of the funny repertoire (as the most would expect from children), but a song written by a Cuban composer, Flores Chaviano, which describes the catastrophe of a mine in Asturias on 1995 that costed the life of many workers. In Bolivia, there are mines too and this is the link in common feelings and experiences between Bolivians and Asturians.
She closes the story by saying: “I feel that I am not the one who gives, but the one who takes. I learn more than I teach. When you go there you see that these people even if they own almost nothing, they still have the energy to make things and they  try to be happy with anything  they have. In the contrary, here in Europe, we have almost everything, but we are not neither  happy nor we take advantage of the rights and the opportunities we have to  do what we can  do.”
My dear readers, I hope that you can see a point here!

To have a visual exprerience of Vinculos, check the video about Vínculos 2008, Concierto didáctico en San Pedro Sula, Hondur ,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfbf01Ig-18

And now, let’s jump to the other actions of Irene, those related to the youth association LLANERA.In this association, Irene and her friends, apart from organizing workshops of poetry, sports, climbing, etc. for youngsters, are also very interested in immigrants. In the frames of a youth European program, an exchange of young people coming from Colombia, Guatemala, Italy and Spain took place, named Intercambio Multilateral . The main topic of the exchange was Immigration. Irene says that immigration is a big problem for Spain, since there are many immigrants who are not treated well and they don’t have good conditions of life. And clearly annoyed she complements, “In the past, Spanish were also immigrants themselves in other countries, like Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, etc. I really don’t understand how it’s possible that now they forget this period and they neglect to show compassion to the immigrants that come in Spain looking for better conditions of life!”

In this exchange, an open platform was created in order the knowledge on different realities of the different countries to be exchanged. Speaking about the experiences of Colombians in relation to the conditions of living in their country, Irene says, “Their reality is really really hard. Things that you can’t find in books. For me it was incredible to see the difference between in just knowing, via several sources, about the difficult conditions of life there and in speaking face-to-face with the people who really experience it. Here in Europe, we live under really good conditions. Economical crisis is nothing compared to the harsh living  conditions in Latin America. And we, the Europeans, contribute in their problems with our industry, our way of living, our closed eyes”.

“Eyes wide shut and a “hapiness pill” to keep us sleepy!”, I would complement…
Irene is also planning to create with some friends a “garbage orchestra”in Colombia, hoping that she can help the people there to feel nice. “They need to know that they are humans, that they have rights and that they should be proud to exist” , she says and she is crossing her fingers for a good luck in this project. Good luck, Irene!

“My art is for the people, not for myself. That’s why I am into Street Art” said Laura looking at me with her big, shiny eyes. 

Laura’s art-projects are inspired by her beliefs about urban life and how people should live in this context.

 
One part of her ideas flows from her aspiration to see happy people in
the streets. For that reason, she is drawing funny monsters on the
walls. “They are my imaginary friends”, she says “ and I thought that
it would be nice to lend  my friends to the people who are sad,
miserable and alone. So they can become happy!!!”.

This made perfect sense to me, since I got really happy when she gave me as a gift some sketches and stickers of her imaginary friends. So, I guess that other people could get happy, as
well. Don’t you think?

She is also very interested in the concept “Transit Spaces”. Abandoned
private spaces that should be open for use by people who need them, for
housing for example. But, also, abandoned urban spaces, like parks,
that should get a “private” character, in the sense of feeling this
place as home, so then people could have motivation of taking care of
these places and animating them.
 This interest in “Transit
Spaces” stems from her belief that “Our body and our mind are
influenced by everything that surrounds us.  So, ourself, actually, is
the result of the combination of these surroundings. It’s not “Me” and
“I” anymore, but what I am is “my surroundings””.       So…what are you???…

One of her “Transit Spaces” creative art actions this year was in a squat in Spain. The squaters were kicked out after many years of residing there and the entrance of the building was sealed with a wall, so nobody could enter the buliding anymore. Not even the owners! Laura was moved and shocked by this wiriness, so she felt like spreading the message of  “Open the Doors of the Not-in-Use Buildings” by acting in the way she knows better. By drawing the wall!
And guess what was the theme of her graffiti. A door, of course! She even attached a real turn on this imaginary door, so people can open it and get in again. Even the owners!

We don’t need the key, we will just break in!!!!

Another “Transit Space” project of her is called “Pantera Spaniola”. Inspired by the Guerilla Gardening concept and by the ritual of putting a flag in the places that are conquered, she came up with this just amazing idea of leaving in the city streets little bags with seeds of flowers inside. These bags are meant to be found by people and the seeds to be planted in chosen by them urban spaces. The grown flowers will have the role of the flag, which will identify each person’s own private urban space. In that sense, a public space gets the character of a compilation of many small private spaces, to which the "owners" are emotionally attached. These spaces become part of one’s home. So, open urban space gets the sense of  home. A home that city people can love and care about.

This is what I call pure and original street art!!!

Feel it as your home!!!

Laura’s artwork references and part of her inspiration are the author of the book “Non- places ”, Marc Augè and the provocative artist Marina Abramovic.

If you want to find more information about this passionate young lady and her authentically artistic “soul”, check flickr.com/b_i_t_x_o   and http://croquetacongelada.blogspot.com .

I am sure you ‘ll love her as much as I did!