Trashed: life on the other side

I only make the TRASH clothes I like to wear. I want to sell clothes to humans who have been trashed in their lives one way or another. TRASH is full of contradictions but it certainly is not fashion, nor it is the opposite of fashion: it just is.

Finding myself in Berlin in the year 2000, I was immediately struck by the discovery of different tribes with strong identities living in the city in an atmosphere of mutual respect, creativity, tolerance, and freedom of self-expression which has been making Berlin what it is through the last hundred years of ups and downs. I immediately joined the city’s underground scene which is still today an endless source of joy, inspiration, and creativity for me.

It is during my time in Berlin that I have come to the conclusion that the world is made up of tribes or clusters, often co-operating between them, but also often antagonising each other and then trashing each other. Recently I have seen some such in Berlin as well….

All my life I have been looking for answers, I have never felt I fully fit in anywhere within what we call society; I have traveled across cultures, lands, tribes always looking for answers. Finally, I came to the conclusion that fitting in was never meant to be, there is actually no such thing as the perfect fit; bits fit in but there is always something that does not. Living is full of contradictions – in the end in order to survive we compromise, we surrender to convention. Society is then a system of conventions and widely shared beliefs – until it isn’t. More and more humans think in terms of black OR white, with me OR against me. We end up treating each other like trash.

I observed also that we humans hold different values and have different tastes and taboos; depending on where we happen to come from, which tribe we belong to, our age group, our sexuality, our appearance, our morality, our spiritualism, our occupation, and the rest, we are all different. This means we regularly trash each other and each other’s beliefs, nowhere more so than in the digital anonymous spaces. The humans that live their lives in what we call the margins we trash the most; those that cannot fit in, refuse to fit it, we trash. I believe myself to be a misfit; I find “Life on the other side” groovy.

Yet it is from within the ranks of misfits, revolutionaries, and alternative thinkers that humans appear to bring real positive change and move us forward. Rebelliousness and independence are what powers change. Misfits power change, visionaries power change. Convention does not power change, its purpose is to keep us safe and in this respect it is useful.

TRASH was created to celebrate our vulnerabilities and our secret self. Everyone has been trashed at one point in their life or another, and we humans like to camouflage our vulnerabilities. TRASH is a contrarian statement celebrating our vulnerabilities, placing them in the open, and as a result, neutralising them.

TRASH clothing is imperfect signifying vulnerability, has a used look signifying life in the margins, and is of exceptionally high quality to show that in TRASH you can find remarkable treasures.

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