Sustainable Fashion Week Ignites Passion for Clothing Repair in Frome. For the second consecutive year, continuing our mission to inspire a shift away from fast fashion. With record numbers in attendance, Everyone Needs Pockets hosted 17 dynamic events in and around Frome.
Connecting with the origins of material
Sewing the seeds for sustainable fashion, the week started with the thought-provoking Flax to Fibre workshop organised by Sewing The Seeds. Our Flax experts challenged people to reconsider their relationship with material, focusing on the growing and creating of yarn. Getting all 39 participants to transform flax into twine and yarn, helping them to explore the link between our food, fibre and where our clothing comes from.
Local fabric and haberdashery shop Millie Moon held mending and alteration workshops and pattern swap for people to exchange their clothes patterns.
MP Anna Sabine attends the Stitch It Don’t Ditch It demonstration
Local MP Anna Sabine came along to Stitch It Don’t Ditch It, a demonstration which saw 15 volunteers from the Pockets network taking their mending out into the street, encouraging others to repair their clothing rather than throwing it away. One passerby explained, “I was inspired by the last ‘Stitch it don’t Ditch it’ event to start mending my clothing.” The event was opened by the town crier and viewed by over 1600 passers by. Anna Sabine took away one of the free mending kits and offered to sew her button on in parliament “If I’m allowed!”.
Photograph credit @CelieNigoumi
Celebrity Scott Wimsett talks to us about fast fashion
Inviting the audience to deep dive into the problem of fast fashion and how to be part of the solution, The Vintage Collective hosted an evening in conversation with Scott Wimsett, fashion and beauty broadcaster, filmmaker, director, and activist for sustainable living. They discussed fashion brands that are fully traceable, and wearing clothes that are already in circulation. Whilst talking about vintage fashion, Scott reminded the audience “It is a deep honour to wear other people’s clothes and what we wear reflects our values”.
Window trail with a difference
Twenty-two local shops took part in a window trail with a map, beautifully illustrated by local artist Donna Sarah. The map shows people where to find numbers, made out of waste fabrics by students from Selwood school and members of the Everyone Needs Pockets network. One of the shops taking part was Popicoq, whose window displayed a dress made out of 37 pairs of unwearable denim jeans.
Mending and Climbing
This month’s How To Mend session was held at The Boulder Rooms. Participants came to the session, some without knowing how to even thread a needle and went away with skills to mend their clothes. In just this session, 19 pieces of clothing were fixed and made wearable again. Liam said, “You’ve really inspired me and I’ve mended quite a few things since the last session”.
Photograph credit @CelieNigoumi
Swap for Share
It was with enormous success that Retold Fashion Fair held its first event on Sunday 29th September. With 21 businesses and individuals selling a huge variety of preloved clothes. With 132 people visiting the fair allowing them to shop in person and keep clothing in circulation. All profits went to Frome Share Shop.
Sell-out talk, over 60 people attended the ‘Materials Futures and Regenerative Design’ with Caroline Till, Judith Van Den Boom and Sane Visser
The sell-out talk exploring Material Futures and Regenerative Design on Saturday Evening generated a waiting list and saw over 60 people turn up. Caroline Till (FranklinTill– A design futures consultancy), Judith Van Den Boom (Head of MA regenerative Design at CSM) and Sanne Visser (A Material design researcher working with human hair as a material resource) spoke about their work influencing the direction of design, and discussed the materials we use and how essential it is for us to shift, not only, towards sustainability and circularity, but to implement regenerative systems and processes that restore our planet. Caroline Till ended her talk, with a quote by Richard Powers, reminding us “We need to focus on the kind of storytelling that reminds us we are not separate from the living world around us”.
Photograph credit @CelieNigoumi
Reusing, Reinventing and Reimagining Clothing Workshop
The week ended with Anna Fraenkel’s creative upcycling workshop, ‘Reusing, Reinventing and Reimagining Clothing’. 20 participants learned to alter clothes they no longer wore into something they would. Nicole said ‘The workshop was great fun and so inspiring too – I can’t wait to finish my upcycled dungarees’.
Photograph credit @CelieNigoumi
