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ΕλληνικάCASE STUDY
Case study 1: Hundhund
CONTEXT:
The brand started its activity from a concern regarding the fashion industry: its use of beautiful campaigns, shows and retail spaces to mask what can be a very destructive production process – both in terms of fabric manufacture, garment sewing and workers’ conditions.
They also wanted to provide their fashion at an affordable price for their community.
DESCRIPTION:
HUNDHUND is a Berlin-based creative studio dedicated to creating clothes with an environmental and social focus. Conceived by designer Isabel Kücke and her partner Rohan Hoole while living together in India, the brand was born in 2016 when they returned to Berlin.
For HUNDHUND transparency is a core thing in the brand and its communication.
They provide price transparency, with a transparent breakdown and markup so the customer can understand why things cost what they cost and come to their own conclusions about value and fairness.
For them , it is important that their clothes not only reflect the values of their community, but that they are also affordable for it. For this reason, when they founded the brand, they decided to only sell directly to the customers to avoid the mark-ups of retail shops or other middlemen. Today, they essentially offer their customers what the wholesale price would be if they had a more conventional business model.
“Most independent brands increase the production price and then sell it to a shop that increases it another 2.5-3 times to sell it to you. This means that you are paying 4-5 times (or more) the production price for your purchase. We are completely transparent. We process our costs and then sell them to you for a mark-up of about 2 times (our margin also pays for our office, designers, sampling and prototypes, marketing etc.). Our model allows us to spend substantially more on materials and finishes than many brands that sell for twice the price” this is what they declare on their website.
They care not only about transparency, but also about responsible production.
They make their clothes together with small European ateliers that treat their workers fairly, and source the fabrics through innovative methods to reduce their environmental impact.
Besides working with small factories in Europe that develop environmentally friendly fabrics, HUNDHUND also like to use deadstock fabric – the fabric left over from luxury brands. In this way they can reuse beautiful fabrics that would otherwise have been discarded, but also allows their customers to enjoy them at a fraction of the price they would have paid through a luxury brand.
LESSON LEARNT:
Sharing your story, choices, processes with your audience creates customer awareness of what fashion is: not just a pretty picture in a magazine, but a complex system, often made up of injustice and exploitation, both environmental and social.
Inclusion in fashion is also a matter of price. By making wise choices in terms of materials, communication and distribution, you can drastically lower the price of your products, making sustainable fashion accessible to a wider audience.
Source: https://www.hundhund.com
Case study 2: Studio Mend
CONTEXT:
Our system encourages voracious consumption of clothing. Often, clothes are worn just a few times before being thrown away and they end up in the trash bin when they get damages, rather than being repaired. All this comes at a very high cost environmentally. How to extend their life cycle and minimize this impact?
DESCRIPTION:
Studio Mend is a high-quality garment repair service founded by designer Sunniva Rademacher Flesland, specializing in visible mending of defects due to long-term use such as holes, stains and weakened fabrics.
The project was created to give an alternative to all those garments that are thrown away despite the fact that they still have great potential to be used and valued.
Each repaired garment is approached with the aim of using the imperfection to enhance the quality and uniqueness of the garment.
Inspired by the Wabi-sabi technique that gives value to imperfection, the project wants to make the embroidery operation majestic, instead of hiding it. By making the mending visible, the intention is to validate the gesture of mending as a practice that contrasts with a system that encourages disposable fashion consumption.
The customer can choose between four darning techniques and the color combination he or she likes best, such as hand darning, darning around holes, patches, indicating types of fabrics or garments on which it works best and those on which it does not.
The customer can simply send an e-mail with the chosen technique, the color combination and the damaged garment and then wait for the receipt of their repaired garment.
Lately the designer has been working on the creation of DIY repair kits and started collaboration with big fashion brands, in order for the project to have a wider audience and impact.
LESSON LEARNT:
Design has enormous potential to restructure current consumption patterns, using method and aesthetics to serve this cause. By creatively reworking an old garment seen as ugly or useless, you can completely change its appearance and make it trendy and commercially appealing again. By systematizing this process, you can change current patterns of production, use and consumption and create new, less impactful habits. The designer is a complex figure who has the competencies to trigger a change in habits in the customer and in the system.
Source: https://studiomend.net