Teaching thoughtful consumption is the goal of The Consistency Project — how do you consistently share education about conscious consumerism with your audience and shoppers?
It has been a fine balance being a business that needs to sell things to survive and at the same time, making sure we are upholding our values on thoughtful consumption. I think our education comes from the interactions we have with our customers in the studio and on social media. During our fitting experience, the educational conversation around how clothing should fit and how we should understand our bodies is an important learning moment as we believe clothing that fits well on our bodies are pieces we wear more and will therefore value more. This shift in purchasing clothing that actually fits comfortably is super important to minimizing our impact. We also love to have conversations about our design and production process. Transparency on how we work and why we sell what we sell is extremely important as it showcases the potential within reworked and secondhand clothing. We believe these types of conversations spark inspiration for other brands and even individuals regarding how they can potentially integrate rework and secondhand more in their lives. We’re constantly learning and iterating so we hope as a collective community we can all push this lifestyle of “reuse” forward.
Tell me about the first reworked item the brand made and how your pieces have evolved since then.
It was the end of 2019 when I opened up a vintage retail shop in Brooklyn, NY. I had just had my first baby in Oct 2019, opened up my retail shop in Dec 2019, and then the pandemic hit. Needless to say, those six months were some of the hardest moments I experienced. We ended up closing the retail shop that summer of 2020 when we were pretty much in lockdown in NYC. Since the early days of my vintage shop, I had always specialized in pants. Vintage denim and workwear particularly. One of the things I liked to do was provide personalized pant-fittings which included ensuring each customer could leave with a pair of pants that had the right inseam. This led to a lot of hemming and cropping of pants. By the time we closed our retail shop, we had collected a range of pant cuff scraps which we of course saved in hopes to figure out how we could recycle them or create something new out of them.
Our first rework design was born in winter of 2020 — the patchwork pant. This design purely came out of us looking at what we already had and getting creative with it. It was the moment rework really became a staple to the brand and it just happened to be at the same time the craze for upcycling, rework, and patchwork became a widespread trend. The timing for it all was crazy, but regardless of trends and the momentum that these pants created for us, I am really proud that this design was born out of necessity and represented one of the hardest moments in the business journey, yet brought hope. We went from creating pairs of patchwork pants to purchase to having them transition to more customs. Starting this year we decided to pause all of our custom orders and patchwork designs in order to reassess how rework could scale. We also wanted to challenge ourselves to explore different versions of patchwork outside of what we were doing which was primarily iterations of checkered patterns.
What is unique about your pant-fitting service? Why do you recommend individuals who have not been sized before, do so with you?
Understanding your body, how something should fit, and what your options are to make the clothing work for you are extremely important to thoughtful consumption. I mentioned this before, but when things look good and feel comfortable, we in turn are confident and wear those pieces of clothing more often. Our pant-fitting service really provides a unique perspective to shopping, and more importantly, addresses pain points in shopping secondhand. Our pant-fitting experience isn’t just a chance to fit someone in a great pair of pants, but it is an opportunity for us to connect and educate our customers so they can leave feeling empowered to shop for their bodies going forward.
We also just really care about the experience we offer and what is best for the customer. We know that appointments can feel overwhelming and scary. We just ask that anyone who comes to shop with us comes with an open mind and a good attitude. We promise we will take care of you and make you feel comfortable and welcome no matter your style, size, preferences, or how much you choose to buy. We are just grateful for the opportunity to do what we do — make people feel good (and comfortable) in what they wear.
What fast fashion created was a culture of wearing our clothing less. With poor quality or poor fit, it is no surprise you may not feel inspired to wear certain pieces in your closet. To have things sit in your closet unworn or to purchase clothing that really doesn’t embrace your body the right way, is when we create waste. Sometimes we do buy things that are well-made but maybe just didn't end up working for our style or bodies and that’s when resell platforms are so valuable in this culture of reuse. Our bodies are constantly changing so when you purchase pants with us, you automatically can take advantage of our buy back program to exchange a pair of pants you purchased from us for a new pair. Our fitting experience helps us understand our customers and their needs to then support them through our ever-evolving relationship with clothing and our bodies.
