Open Fashion and Fashion Activism/ Hacktivism

The internet as a contemporary and powerful medium is offering a great benefit in spreading knowledge and information. It offers the direct contact and exchange between wearer and designers. Downloadable patterns including sewing-instructions are about to become more and more popular. Fashion-designers can explore new creative ways for a more open approach. The do-it-yourself Fashion doesn't need to imply that the user is unable to buy products, but is interested in choosing ones own designs, over what is picked for us by the industry. The ability of sewing and creating ones own clothing, provides people with freedome of the industry. 

 

In the 50ties, Aenne Burda founded a Fashion Magazine in Germany: 'Burda Mode'. The Magazine was the first fashion title that included besides the new seasons trend, actual sewing patterns in the back of each issue. This meant a lot of freedom for the people at that time, they were able to sew and wear fashionable clothing even with maybe a smaller budget. 

early edition 'Burda Mode'

Slowly designer rediscover the idea of selling their patterns aside to the products. This form of openly sharing the design, can definitively be called fashion activism, as they leave the consumer the space to use their design but change it according to their own preferences in choice of the fabric and personal additions. For example, SANS from France offers patterns of some of their fashion line to be sold and downloaded. Over that 'diy-Couture' from the UK offers a whole collection with extremely simple patterns to be bought in the form of little illustrated booklets with very detailed informations on the process. The newly founded brand 'Fashion-hackers', based in Germany, promotes the same idea of a downloadable collection, where u pick and pay for each pattern you download. The sewing tips and instructions can be found for free on the companies blog. Especially positive is here the creation of the next seasons design. Through social media they invite everyone to participate, vote and contribute with personal wishes and ideas. Each projcet has a bit different concept, though the main idea stays the same. Open source Fashion is a major step towards a shared understanding and enabling the consumer's to become active makers. Exemplary in this area are the Openwear foundation supported through the European Union and Shareware (shrwr). Openwear Collaboration, Pamoyo and Sharewear freely share their Designs under Creative Commons licence. 

Screenshot from 'Fashion-Hackers' website.