Posted On: October 27th, 2009 | Author: admin
Basothu house in South Africa, using the Litema design style
As a start to my blogging days (first time blogging ever!) , I thought the best way to let you know why my Ben and Bear brand is so close to my heart, and motivates me to do well with it, is to share some background info with you. Not too boring i hope! Enjoy the read, enjoy the Ben and Bear eco bags, and I look forward to the conversation and journey we are now starting.
Inspiration for my work
I have always loved and been inspired by colours and shapes and the patterns they make in our environment. And due to this, I was greatly inspired by the Litema design practice of the Basothu tribe in South Africa who use their natural surroundings, and the colours and patterns from this, as inspiration for their art. Then, whilst living in Singapore in a few years back, I won a hand crafted handbag created from old clothes made by a South African community, and I just loved how they had used colours and patterns to create these gorgeous bags. It inspired me to think about how I could make a designer bag from recycled materials and also use the Litema design practice. Now, five years later, I found the perfect second hand materials (inner tubes, old clothes and belts) combination to make the bags I have been wanting to create for years. Using recycled materials has always been important to me as I want in my own small way to try and inspire people to use what we have already in our environment and transform it into a ‘’new product’’ and give it a new life and use. We all know the impact the constant ‘’manufacturing of new goods’’ is having on our environment, and we need to start changing the way we think about making products moving forward. Supporting community business through purchasing products to create our sustainable fashion bags with is also on our future agenda, but I will go into this in more depth in Q3.
Description of my design aesthetic?
Ethical, simple, bold, transformational, imaginative
Inspiration behind the interesting choice of materials - recycled inner tubes of tyres, vintage clothes and belts
I was inspired by the South African recycled handbag I won in Singapore 5 years ago, where I saw how they used old clothes to hook knot through hessian to create their bags. Still one of my favourite brands of bags! www.mielie.com So when I was looking for materials to create my ethical fashion bags, I knew I wanted to use old clothes and belts but was struggling to find the base material. I was in an initial meeting in Bangkok with the manufacturer of my bags and I saw some inner tubing and a waste basket they had made from it. I asked them if we could test making a bag with this tubing and it worked! We had a few development challenges but it finally worked. I then found on the internet that there were 2 other brands using inner tubes for handbags, one in the UK and the other in the states. None of them used much colour or patterns on their bags, unlike how I design mine with the colourful circles to create some life and character in them and making each bag 100% bespoke and its own personality. Using 4 circles also has a significant numerological meaning – appropriate endings – which is very appropriate for our eco bags.
To further get the environmental message out, every eco fashion bag we sell, is packaged in a recycled t-shirt drawstring bag to carry it home in and store it in. The message being here that we don’t need to use plastic or paper, but rather let’s recycle what we have in overwhelming supply that will only fill our earth one day as trash.
We are also planning on working with community businesses who make jewellery and other craft, such as bracelets, necklaces and pendants, which we will use to decorate the bags with to create our stylish, simple brand, all the while helping community businesses become sustainable. And I would love for the Ben & Bear brand to branch out into more fashion and lifestyle products that we can support more and more businesses to get their products to market and create income for them. The vision is for Ben and Bear to evolve into a strong global brand, and act as a sales, marketing and PR platform for free and fair trade products, sold under the Ben and Bear brand label. At the moment we are buying hand- beaded butterfly strap bling to hang on each bag, which are made by a Phuket, Thailand based charity organisation who offers sex trade workers alternative avenues of work by teaching them new skills that will empower them to start new lives. As our sales take off, so too will their income and ability to assist more women and children who are stuck in this devastating lifestyle.
Response to the Ben & Bear Eco Handbags
People love them and find them intriguing and funky, especially because the concept is making them from second hand materials and it feels like a ‘’good conscience’’ buy. The use of the inner tubing really fascinates people and they love the ‘’characteristic and comfortable’’ feel the old belts and clothes give them. The tubing gives it a very edgy look and it seems to appeal to people, and creates that feeling that this product is different.
Ben & Bear’s Customer profile
I think people who are looking for something different, bespoke and classic and also something with a conscience behind it as we move into a new era that is now starting to really focus on environmental and social issues, are the people who will like my bags. I am sure they are not everyone’s cup of tea, but that is fine. These bags, with their ethical fashion story behind them, need to find owners who resonate with them and their story, and hopefully inspire their own transformational stories.
My thoughts about the current state of the Earth/Environment
We need to seriously start changing the way we think and live – and the ‘’things’’ we purchase is a major part of this. There needs to be a change in conscience behind buying in today’s world – people need to value where, how, by who and of what the product has been made, so they can make a choice to support companies that are responding to this environmental and social crisis we are in, and to force ones that aren’t to now make the change to better practices. It’s a shift away from short term gain and excess to long term sustainability and balance for all.
Involvement in any other forms of environmental activism
Not on an organizational level, but endeavour to live a life where we make better choices, and to teach my son these, and which if we do our small part will impact on a collective global level. I am now in a stage in my life that with Ben and Bear i am hoping to do more going forward in ways that I can. I have always been inspired by the following parable –
An old man had a habit of early morning walks on the beach. One day, as he looked along the shore, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. As he came closer he saw that it was a young woman and she was not dancing but was reaching down to the sand, picking up starfish and very gently throwing them into the ocean.
“Young lady,” he asked, “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”
“The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I do not throw them in they will die.”
“But young lady, do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You cannot possibly make a difference.”
The young woman listened politely, paused and then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves, saying:
“It made a big difference to that one.”
Future plans/goals for Ben and Bear
At the moment I am focused on getting the Ben & Bear eco fashion bags brand launched in the region and hopefully further afield, and to get the message of recycling and transformation out there through them. We want sales to grow as the more we sell the more we are able to purchase community products, which further enables them to develop themselves thus creating the self sufficiency cycle that is so desperately needed around the globe – self-sufficiency through ownership of sustainable, community business.
Sustainable fashion is a growing sustainability design philosophy and trend with the goal to create a long term system which can be supported indefinitely in terms of environmentalism and social responsibility. So Ben and Bear’s ethical, desirable and very on-trend eco fashion handbags highlight the environmental focus by us breathing new life into redundant materials to deliver a style that is utterly original, and gets the message across. I also envision supporting community businesses to become sustainable by purchasing their products to create new cultural ranges of Ben and Bear’s ethical fashion bags.
With an ever increasing number of people wanting to purchase products of brands that are supportive of the environmental issues we face and who are also socially responsible, fashion decisions are changing the world over to eco fashion brands.
Much work still to be done by all!
ciao
Raewyn
Category: eco fashion, sustainable fashion | 6 Comments »
2011 was a tough year, and it seems so for alot of people who I have came across in my travels last year. A year of changes, transformations and definitely endings to ways of living and behaviours that were not appropriate. We only need to read the news to see how people are being ‘caught out for bad behaviours”. End of 2010 saw me making a decision to leave Phuket Thailand where we had been based for the past 5 years, and to head to Africa. We finally left March 2011 and moved to Gaborone Botswana, where we stayed for 5 months. An eventful and highly stressful time, but one steeped in lessons and endings of old hurts. We then decided to move to South Africa, my home country and are now living on a farm 4km outside of Stellenbosch in the Western Cape and are finally home. So, the lesson for me (and nothing new), sometimes you need to travel/journey through some incredibly difficult periods to then emerge at the end in the place you are meant to be. Whether its physical location or just within yourself – the calm, peaceful place where you can breathe.
