My inbox is regularly clogged with press releases announcing new collections. Said press releases usually go straight to the trash folder upon receipt. It’s not that I’m against new clothing lines or whatevs. It’s that “new” alone isn’t enough to pique my interest anymore.
To thrift a Goodwill Outlet Center is to realize the overwhelming amount of unused textile excess produced by our material world. Is a lot of that excess uber fugly? You bet, and therein lies the challenge for burgeoning designers.
Sketching out a collection, outsourcing the labor, and producing the wares en masse with zero regard for the environmental impact of the endeavor amounts to business as usual. Making something from nothing is the norm. There’s nothing groundbreaking about what’s already been done.
Making something from something – breaking down or restyling fabric that’s already out there – is a refreshing, forward-thinking approach to fashion that improves on its checkered past.
De-materialization makes green more than a buzzword: ALIOMI suggests it’s the new black.
The concept for ALIOMI started years ago, with a few Sarah Lawrence undergrads too broke to shop retail. They became seasoned thrifters, then they took it to the next level, re-tweaking and embellishing their secondhand finds to suit their badass style and unique taste. Necessity truly is the mother of inventive fashion lines.
ALIOMI is a mishmash of vintage fabulosity and DIY gems. I mean, I can stud and scissor, but these girls can STUD and SCISSOR. I’ve seen the line up close: The embellishment might be done by hand, but there’s nothing DIY about it. It’s professional, artful, responsibly made and one-of-a-kind.
The goods pictured above range from $28 – $145 – in all honesty, I’m usually not on board with $76.00 embellished cutoffs. Had I not seen this line in person, I might have rationalized against a splurge of this ilk on the grounds that I could DIY something equally amazing for less.
Regardless of whether or not that’s the case, finding, distressing, and studding the shorts myself would take four hours, minimum. Six if I held myself to the perfectionism characteristic of ALIOMI’s DIY stuffs. The shorts in question, at $76.00, amount to $12.66 an hour for six hours of work.
My point? The thought, time and energy that go into crafting a kickass reconstructed item are extensive, hence the reason most reworked vintage lines have an average per-item cost of over $250. ALIOMI’s price points are uber reasonable in comparison.
Wanna help this stellar new line get off the ground? Donate a buck or two to their Kickstarter campaign.
Cheers to socially and environmentally conscious sartorial endeavors of this ilk. IMHO, up-and-coming designers would be wise to take a cue from ALIOMI, and use de-materialization to inform their future lines.
It’d certainly make for some inspiring press releases.
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