NEW PRODUCTS AND NEW FABRICS

Here are the new products that have been freshly listed this week.

First of all the Shades Of Red tote bag, a super sturdy shopping bag made from upcycled denim in lots of different shades of red. Burgundy, peach, greyish reds.. lined with a really tough, water resistant material from old army sleeping bags. I've fitted this bag with two extra long straps, so you can wear it over your shoulder.

Shades Of Red tote bag made from upcycled materials

I also finally listed another fabric I'm really excited about: naturally coloured cotton!
This is a fabric made from cotton plants that are grown in different shades of predominantly greens and browns. All organic and with no use of GMO's! I love this fabric so much, because it's unbleached and undyed, smells very natural and has a subtle, almost earthy texture to it.

Lyptis Women's Batwing T-Shirt in naturally coloured cotton brown with cream stripes

This fabric is available as a women's t-shirt and a men's t-shirt now. I have the light fabric with green stripes too, but the darker fabric in green is not available at the moment, due to harvest issues.

Lyptis Men's T-Shirt in naturally coloured cotton cream with brown stripes

And here is a close up, so you can get an idea of the texture

And I listed two more t-shirts. One with a very low scoop and gathered sleeves in a grassy green colour. It's also available in dark pink, grassy green, navy and black.

Low Scoop T-Shirt in grassy green

And finally a squirrel t-shirt!

Women's Squirrel T-Shirt in organic cotton

Now the family of squirrel items is complete. I've got a squirrel dress and a squirrel skirt and now the t-shirt. Everything is of course made from certified organic cotton and handmade by me in my studio in Berlin.

What do you think about the new items? Have you got any favourite colours you want to see? Leave me a note. You can also get in touch through my Facebook page.

ARTS FESTIVAL & OPEN STUDIO

The annual Schöneweide Arts Festival or in German, Kunst am Spreeknie Festival, is happening this weekend again. It's been a great event last year, so I am quite looking forward to it again.

The festival kicks off tonight at 7pm with the Vernissage of the main exhibition at Zentralstation.

Over the weekend of the 12th and the 13th of July there will be 30 different exhibitions and more than 100 artists are opening their studios to the public.
There will be guided walks through exhibitions and the Schöneweide industrial area and other stuff going on.

I was supposed to participate in a Pop Up Store during the festival, which got cancelled due to the location not happening. Nevermind, right?! More time to party for me!

So, I will be hanging out at one of my favourite places, the Funkhaus at Nalepastrasse, where my studio is located and the studios of a lot of other people of varying degrees of crazy.
There will be a lot of art, especially paintings, some sculptures and some crafts. We have a music and performance program. And I will tell you right now, Saturday will be better then Sunday.

Here is the program for the rather posh sounding "Kultursaal".

It's all happening directly next the the river Spree in a nice East German 60's ambience.
If you want to visit me, I'm at the Funkhaus on the 4th floor, my room number is 431.
Maybe I see you around!

And here is a video of the festival from last year.

MORE GREEN FASHION IN BERLIN

Yesterday I wrote a post about the Green Showroom in Berlin. I had to split it up, there was just too much cool stuff to see. So today I wanna show you some more sustainable fashion labels.

One interesting project is Algeamy by Blond & Bieber. Together with the Fraunhofer Institute they are developing different coloured algae dyes to use for textile printing.

The interesting part is the dye, depending on the binding agent, developes different textures. From what feels like regular dye, to what feels like a quite tough, rubbery surface.

And the even more interesting thing is that the colours change after time due to UV exposure. So green turns into a light and then a medium blue. Orange turns into yellow or red or the other way around, I don't quite remember.

Love their printing machine too. It looks like a posh toy market stall for kids.
So elegant and simple, but so sophisticated. Very cool.

I think it's really interesting to see these innovations at the Fashion Week. Some people are really into their research and working together with science institutions.

Blond & Bieber even have a pretty video showing their process.

Who doesn't love videos, right?!

Envido is a label from Brazil working closely together with different local craftspeople, recycling bronze, leather, rubber, and even gem stones. Because apparently Brazil has so many gemstones and the small ones ain't good for exporting, so they are just getting thrown away! Like emeralds and amethysts and stuff. Crazy! The girls are super nice and I think it's great that they work with so many community projects and are doing so much upcycling.

Here is a picture of the recycled bronze, I really love the bracelet, even though I'm not a fan of the leather in the background. Still wanted to post the picture.

We briefly spoke about football too, the match between Germany and Brazil being that night. Well, that must have been a hard night for them! I hope they didn't take it too bad and have recovered by now.

Farrah Floyd is another fashion label based in Berlin, which integrates a zero waste system into their business. Like for example, developing cuts with no cutoffs, where you use a rectangle piece of fabric and just use seams to change the shape of the garment. Tricky stuff!

I like the cross between streetwear and a more eccentric, elegant silhouette.

And here is the show piece of the green showroom in my opinion, a gown by Lionel Morin. Not my style, but I thought it was interesting. It's more conceptual art than wearable fashion.

I'll probably write another post later, but first I got to go back to take some more pictures..

GREEN FASHION IN BERLIN

Yesterday I helped out a friend at the Green Showroom in Berlin. The Green Showroom is one of two connected sustainable fashion shows in Berlin, the other one being the Ethical Fashion Show. Basically the Ethical is for Streetwear and the Green Showroom for the more posh, luxury sector in the industry.

Both have a sustainable agenda, if you want to participate your label has to cover at least one environmental and one social aspect, which could be using organic fabrics, upcycling, local production, waste reduction, paying fair wages and so on.
I always like those fashion shows, because I feel more at home there and I know people are kind of on the same page with me when it comes to sustainability, eco conscious production and their work being socially viable.

The Green Showroom is held at the Adlon Hotel right next to the Brandenburger Tor/Brandenburg Gate in the middle of Berlin. It's one of the poshest hotels in town and crawling with rich people. Basically people, that I never get to fucking see during the rest of the year.

Which makes it really entertaining in itself. It's like a social study or something for me going there.

Here is a bad picture of the restaurant area.

And here is an example of the terribly cheesy artwork they have crowding the place. This one costs 5000€ btw. It looks like something bad from a 90's Berlin gift shop.

The ladies at the fashion show reception are super nice!

Here is a quick look into the cozy fashion expo setup, including carpets, heavy drapes and wood panelling.

The location makes for a quite intimate atmosphere.

And now let me show you some of the labels I liked.

There is of course my friends label, Maria Seifert Collections, pretty women's wear made from organic cotton or other organic fabrics. This time parts of the collection were featuring an interesting peacock print and yellow pants.

Her stall neighbour Skrabak had some cool dresses on offer which are printed and produced in Germany featuring interesting patterns inspired by Moroccan mosaic tiles.

Then there was Living Blue, who make indigo tie dyed scarfs made in Bangladesh. I'm always amazed by what's possible do make with tie dye, straight lines and everything, very impressive.

And here is Katrien van Hecke's collection, she's using plant dye exclusively for her lovely dresses and scarves. Unfortunately they are not vegan, as she uses silk fabcris only. But I wanted to show you anyways, because it's really amazing what you can do with natural dyes!

So expressive!

Ok, I just decided I will make 2 or even 3 posts out of this. There is just too much cool shit I wanna show you! Tomorrow we'll continue. Stay tuned and I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions regarding the shows just ask me. :)

NATURAL COLOURS AND DYEING

As you can see in my last blog post I have been experimenting with natural dyes. The dyes are all plant based and different parts of plants can be used as dyestuffs, like barks, roots, leaves and flowers.. To set the colours and make them more lightfast I treat the fabrics with mordants, which can be certain kinds of salts for example.

It's quite a labour intensive process. Especially considering that I don't have a water supply in my studio.
But I love doing it, it's quite meditative and I love seeing the results.

I will start offering a few items, such as dresses and women's and men's t-shirts in my Webshop, in the beginning in a few different colours. Right now I have yellow, sand, brown and grey available and I'm also experimenting with different shades of purple.

I'll post some experiments and results on my facebook page too, so, if you haven't already "liked" it, you can do that now.

The first item I listed in my webshop is this beautiful men's t-shirt I made from an organic sweatshirt fabric and dyed in this absolutely lovely yellow colour. There is also a slight tie dye optic to most hand dyed items. Colours and patterns vary in each item and make them truly unique.

Will be posting more soon, keep updated here on my blog or on facebook or my webshop.

DYE GARDENS AND WITCH KITCHENS

If you are following me on Facebook, you might know I've recently gotten quite interesting in natural dyeing. I went to a workshop a while ago and then dedicated a corner in my studio to playing around with natural dyes as well. With shelf, cookers and big pots and everything.

My dye shelf. It's cute, but it should be BIGGER!

It's a lot of fun and I feel like a witch, stirring these big pots with twigs that I've found outside. In German we would say it's like a "Hexenküche" - a "witch kitchen". It's also really meditative.

Omg, I couldn't get enough of those scarves.
Unfortunately they are silk and I don't don't use silk, coz not vegan.

I've tried a couple of things, but don't have the time right now to commit myself to it more. Eventually I want to sell a couple of things - clothes that I've found or made, dyed with natural plants.

At the weekend I vistited one of my friends in her dye garden. She started it together with a couple of other women at the Allmende Gardens at the Tempelhof Airport which closed down only a few years ago.

Luscious!

It was the most beautiful late summer day (you get a lot of sun at the airport field when it's sunny, coz no trees!) and the beautiful, natural coloured textiles looked so vibrant flowing in the wind. I don't even think the pictures do them justice. They looked amazing!!

I was very impressed what these ladies had done in half a year. Really great!

And I also got some tickseed seeds, which I'm trying to grow on my window sill now. 

Aren't those colours beautiful?

JUST A FERRY RIDE AWAY

Most of the time I take the bike to my studio. Sometimes the tram. But on special occasions, I get a little treat. You see, the building where my studio is, is directly at the Spree, the main river in Berlin.

And a couple of minutes from there we have a little ferry boat crossing the river. Just a 2 minute ride, but still pretty special, especially in great weather.

I didn't get to take a picture of the boat, but it's pretty cute.

And when you get to the other side you are kind of in the middle of a forest.

Isn't that cool?!