Coming to Cardiff for a week of events at the end of the month, Love Your Clothes has teamed up with a host of charities, including Green City Events and Oxfam, to help reduce the environmental impact of clothes.
Designing these events with upcycling in mind, Love Your Clothes aim to help people extend the useful life of what Rebecca Clark, Director of Green City Events, calls “fast fashion and cheap clothing.” Throughout the week there are plenty of workshops to get involved in. From repair surgeries teaching simple fixes to keep clothes in use for longer to events showing how to upcycle an old shirt, there will be no shortage of things to do.
One of the main features is sure to be the Oxfam Sewathon, taking place on Wednesday 26 October at The Castle Emporium. Combining charity and creativity, volunteers are asked to help refashion donated denim into festival ready shorts to be sold by Oxfam at the likes of Glastonbury and Boomtown next summer.
Jamie Perry from Love Your Clothes says, “This is a great opportunity for anyone who likes being creative, makes things at home or has dreamt about having their own designs on show.”
Promising a hive of industry in the centre of Cardiff, denim, ribbons and broken jewellery are already being collected at the Oxfam boutique on St Mary Street. The Sewathon will allow creative volunteers to refashion, sew, embroider and embellish at their leisure and all in aid of a good cause.
Kirsty Davies-Warner, Head of Oxfam Cymru, has stressed that through something as simple and fun as this, lives can be changed across the world. She adds that, “The Sewathon is a fantastic way to get creative and make a difference at the same time.”