Tall tales: the life-giving value of the vintage and reimagined 🌎
Why pieces with past lives galore are way more precious than the endlessly shiny and new
At the beginning of Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, the doco that just dropped on Netflix, ex-Adidas Brand President Roger Lee talks about how the mess we’re all in now leads directly back to when we started adding more and more ‘stories’ to shopping.
Like the story of a new season to nudge fans into getting another shirt. The story of a high-fash tie-in to leverage the lure of the latest bag or sneaker. Or the story behind the mad buying season that we’re all in the middle of right now, sardined between BFCM and the big 25th – that the more you love your loved ones, the more shiny, unnecessary stuff you’ll gift them.
But what if we flipped that storytelling ammo and harnessed it to the second, or third – or countless lives of a thing? What if the sparkle of the new bounced instead off the repaired, repurposed, reimagined (the sort of thing we’ll have in our curated shop next year)? And people shied away from excess gear with no past and no soul, in the same way some still snub charity shops that are so steeped in stories?
(Sidenote – there are some real tearjerker tales in this recent Guardian round-up of the most surprising discoveries inside those, inspired by designer Jean Pallant’s reunion with her much-loved-then-lost, one-off coat after an epic 40 years apart – what a story.)
It’s like Kintsugi, that Japanese art of tenderly dab-dab-dabbing smashed-up ornaments back together using shimmery gold and silver, and making them way more beautiful – and precious – than before.
(Second sidenote: ‘Kintsugi’ is also a really lovely track by composer Cephas Azariah, itself made from ‘broken fragments of sounds’. Just right for mellow, mid-morning, re-centring vibes.)
Because, the more lives we can give the things we already have – and the things we choose to have next – the more life we can give, well, everyone.
Which is… maybe… the most powerful story of the lot.
(Did you like that little bit of dramatic pacing there? Thank you, *bowing*, thank you.)
Tune in, team up and let's turn the tide.
Team BRiMM
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It’s an oldie but a goodie – this March 2023 FT article tells the story of a creative collective that came together to rescue Bali from death by trash and ended up making an immense plastic hotel and village and triggering a massive wave of recycling-focussed design worldwide. NBD, then.
→ READ MORE
Not the 1997 Damien Hirst book of the same name (which is having a nice little afterlife of its own, selling at just under £2k a pop). But instead the goodlooking ‘Afterlife’ collection of marble-like crates and benches made from gas pipes and other ‘rubbish’, dreamt up by Rotterdam studio Odd Matter when challenged by cool London design outfit, Supernovas.
→ SEE MORE
Until March 2025, textile artist Celia Pym’s non-holey Socks: The Art of Care and Repair will be on show in London’s NOW Gallery, centred around a brilliantly bold installation of 488 former warehouse waste socks, each lovingly stitched by pupils, families and staff from a local primary school.
→ CHECK IT OUT
This Thursday you can give past-it pieces another lease of life at this memorable Marylebone pop-up. Preloved-clothing-platform peeps The Cirkel are teaming up with redesign app folk LOOM to host a Silk Screen Printing Workshop for upcyclers on all gears.
→ SIGN UP
This sticky sesame-baked Anna Jones dish is so sweet, salty, sour and thankfully simple that we’ve got it on repeat in our house. It even works for a 7-year-old.
→ MAKE THIS
MUSIC FOR CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
Thanks to Zoe, forever our queen of killer office beats, for her freshly whipped'n'wicked Winter Warmers playlist this week. It’s warming our cockles right nice.
FROM THE COLLECTIVE
Josh got us onto Return to Santa, a sweet way for kids to give unwanted and broken toys back to the big man (*cough* charity shops) // Thanks to Charlotte, we’re nabbing this wallet-size Patagonia repair kit for the hard-to-buy-for in our lives // We’re excited to read Conrad’s new substack Dark Luxury on the eye-opening hidden depths of the fashion industry.
We love to hear what our collective is finding. Share your links with Becky
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Carbon maths
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