Open Softwear is a book about fashion and technology: more precisely about Arduino boards, conductive fabric, resistive thread, soft buttons, LEDs, and some other things and can be downloaded here.

The London-based label DIYcouture launched its debut collection DIYC<now/>.

DIYC<now/> is not the average clothing collection. Instead of buying a finished garment, one purchases a book containing a set of instructions to make that particular garment yourself.

Their message:

“Inspired by the thousands of invisible pairs of hands around the globe that make the clothes we buy, DIYcouture hopes to inspire people to turn off their screens and get up to their elbows in the 3-dimensional world of creation. It supports the slow revolution. Helping people to produce garments that are precious, rather than disposable, this is the antithesis of fast-fashion.”

Yesterday, I showed you the great Colour-In Dress by  Berber Soepboer & Michiel Schuurman. But there’s more: they also came up with the Replacement Dress.

This dress is actually a set of three dresses which can be combined in different ways via a button system to create  a different outfit each time.

Source: Berber Soepboer

In collaboration with graphic designer Michiel Schuurman, fashion designer Berber Soepboer created a beautiful dress which can be personalised by the person who wears it.

This Colour-In Dress has a black and white pattern which can be coloured in following your own taste.

Or as stated by the artist herself: “The concept of the dresses make it possible that the cloth is partly designed by the person who wears it, which hopefully makes them more valuable to the wearer. When clothes are cared for people tend to wear it longer, this makes the dress durable.”

Source: Berber Soepboer

I absolutely adore cashmere! It’s so soft ! So I was pretty exited when I found out about Trendy Workshop.

Trendy Workshop is a french fashion platform that allows users to design and buy their own clothing, but also share their designs with other users within the Trendy Workshop community.

Right now, it’s all about cashmere. So the clothes one creates are solely made out of cashmere. But according to co-founder, Tristan de Montebello, the offer will be broadened with cotton this spring. Besides the limitation of  the fabric, the clothes one can design are nowadays only restricted to those of the upper body (tops, sweaters, dresses). However it’s a very nice idea, that works around three major goals: create, buy and share! For the moment 100% French, so deliveries only in France.

Below are two videos in which co-founder Tristan de Montebello explains the concept of Trendy Workshop. Although the first one is in French,  you’d better listen carefully as he also gives some nice washing and ironing tips for cashmere clothing.

Source: Trendy Workshop X En Mode Fashion.com from enmodefashion on Vimeo.

In this second video, a nice quote from Tristan de Montebello, which stresses the need for user input and user research: “Listening to the community will get us to be the best!”

Source: Create your own clothes - Tristan de Montebello @ LeWeb from Tiburon Tv on YouTube