As part of our Impact lecture series this year, the BA first year textiles students were introduced to Zoe Romano, founder of Open Wear, a collaborative clothing platform, where people upload clothing patterns they have created to be shared by anyone.
While initially, Zoe was going to be offering the students a template pattern for a project they were working on, this didn’t eventuate, but this didn’t stop Alexandra Brinck, one of the textile students from sharing with OpenWear.
Alexandra designed a bag that turns into a shirt and contacted Zoe for uploading it on to the Open Wear website. Alexandra initiated this collaboration inspired by the talk and wanted to challenge ‘sustainability through multi-functionality’
‘ I have been in touch with Zoe, and will be sharing one of my own patterns on OpenWear – this way we are still collaborating with them, it’s just that the pattern contribution is going in the other direction! I felt it would have been a shame after the great talk Zoe delivered not to strike while the iron was hot and get a collaboration going between Chelsea and OpenWear.’
