What is the Fashion Open Studio?
Fashion Open Studio is an exhibition initiative launched by Fashion Revolution in 2017, which campaign for a clean, safe, fair, transparent and accountable fashion industry.
This year, the exhibition involves a series of events that aim to honour the people and the process behind fashion. Working with emerging designers, established pioneers and major companies, Fashion Revolution help to promote the transparency and longevity of the industry. Both digitally and offline, in face-to-face events, they use simple and authentic narratives that resonate with both consumers and creators.
About the Fashion Open Studio exhibition
Fashion Open Studio, in collaboration with Fashion Revolution, partnered with the British Council to present a series of events and studio workshops. Working with nine international designers, each one was in response to the topics discussed at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change COP26.
At the digital design weekend launch at the V&A museum during the London Design Festival in September 2021, nine participating designers from around the world were selected to open their studios virtually and showcase their creative responses to the environmental impact of the fashion and the topics of the talk on the climate of Adaptation and Resilience and Nature.
The series of digital events took place between September 25 and November 12, of which the British Council's global program The Climate Connection was part. The series of events were recreated through a physical activation in Glasgow during COP26 (November 1-12), which offered both the public and COP26 attendees the opportunity to interact in person at the open studio activities.
Digital Events and Platform
Each of the selected designers created a digital event for the programming of the Fashion Open Studio x COP26 event. These events had a variety of formats:
- Visits to studios
- Demonstrations
- Workshops
- Visits to exhibitions
- Films about fashion
- Films about the fashion process, and
- Discussions around sewing
The event took place between September 25 and November 12 in the preliminaries and during COP26.
Americas representation
One of the selected designers is GARCIA_BELLO, a sustainable brand based on upcycling methods. The brand is based between Rio Grande in Argentina and Arnhem in the Netherlands. The items in each collection are made of donated hand-me-downs, old or discarded clothes combined with raw biodegradable cotton, locally produced.
