DIY COUTURE

I came across an article about this new clothing label set up by Rosie Martin in this weeks Big Issue magazine (#873) She has been working with the homeless at Crisis for years and still gives sewing workshops, but her latest venture is a re-working of cloth-kit style clothing patterns, showing enthusiastic novices how to tackle sewing patterns of unique designs that you would actually want to wear!!

The designs are great and the instructions simplified into visual guides rather than being jargon filled and confusing. the first one is available free through the Big Issue website.





all location shots by Luka Yang and studio shots by Gina Amama

"London-based label DIYcouture launches its debut collection DIYC in December 2009.

DIYC is an unusual clothing collection: rather than purchasing a garment, the DIYcouture customer purchases a book containing a set of simple, visual instructions, providing them with the means to make that garment themselves. The whole collection can be created using DIYcouture’s books. Simple language, diagrams and pictures take the maker through the creation process. The outcome is personally tailored, one-off garments that fit each individual body.

DIYcouture removes the need for complex sewing patterns, so that learning to make clothes is easy and accessible to all.

The pieces of clothing in the collection are possibilities that live in the imagination, on paper, in potential. They are ghosts that come into being as each person begins to build them himself with his own interpretations.

Inspired by the thousands of invisible pairs of hands around the globe that make the clothes we buy, DIYcouture hopes to inspire people to turn off their screens and get up to their elbows in the 3-dimensional world of creation. It supports the slow revolution. Helping people to produce garments that are precious, rather than disposable, this is the antithesis of fast-fashion.

From December, DIYcouture will publish one instruction book a month. One book = one garment. Each book also prints a series of previously unpublished work by artists from around the world."