⚡ UPCYCLING IS NOT THE NAME OF A NEW TREND ⚡
💡Materials are our main source of inspiration at @therapy_berlin and @therapy_argentina
🧦We find materials everywhere: at flea markets, second hand shops, private wardrobes, deposits and in the streets. We find amazing things dismissed, unwanted, devaluated simply because of the whims of trends. Or they are the product of a design failure, in a production system that still unbelievably, doesn't assumes its responsibility and it's not held accountable.
❌In the past months we have been reading, studying, researching. We still are. We learned to put words to what we intuitively knew, that WASTE IS A DESIGN FAILURE.
🔑The pandemic accelerated the process of becoming more efficient for many industries especially fashion and textile industry.
🏭But the bigger the brand or the factory, the more time it needs to change.
As those big players evolve at a slow pace towards a healthier system, we the makers, the people, the ones that have been working since long with respectful, circular, efficient, disruptive and open minded approaches to materials and systems, continue to demonstrate another way to relate with materials, people and planet is actually the only way.
🔧We continue to give solutions to the problems whose creators don't know how to fix because they are too comfortable and wealthy as they are. But not for long.
✂️Many big brands discovered upcycling and resources efficiency just now, making it a trend. We see this with hope. But we also remain awake, and we say: UPCYCLING IS NOT A TREND. Upcycling is a temporary solution they are using for their systemic problem: WASTE, which must be corrected.
👵Our grandma was an upcycler. But not because she had too many clothes. She did it because clothes were not as abundant and cheap as they are today, and so she would make new out of old again and again.
✂Upcycling was there before us and it always will be here. An open door for everyone to enter a world of creativity and questioning. Upcycling teaches us to redesign and to rethink a given morphology, a given function or aesthetic and ultimately, to rethink the given consumption system.
💡Materials are our main source of inspiration. Our best, more genuine ideas come from them. From searching them and curating temporary collections. From putting them all together on the table, mixing them. This materials can be originally thought for something else, not for wearing them, or yes, but in a certain way that we will not necessarily mantein. They can be hard, soft, dark, transparent. They can be fabrics, chains, buttons, toys. Bands, cords, elastics, laces... shiny, metallic, warm or cold.
⚡A magical relationship is whimsically born when they find us. Because they find us and not the other way around.
⚡Every material is unique, has its own story and evoques ours.
⚡They are like words, like books. They talk about people and places, weathers and all kind of situations like coincidences and missunderstandings. They talk about change, about sense and nonsense. They talk about work and effort.
⚡Once abandoned, they become more honest. Tags, shapes and colours don't mean the same anymore. They talk about generosity but also about dehumanization, and detachment.
⚡They talk about the hands and the earth from where they are born.
⚡They are anonymous and so they talk about all of us. More than words, they are questions for which we don't have answers.