Textile designer Siff Pristed is a part of a new sustainable fashion initiative on this year’s festival created by the Nordic fashion platform ‘Unfair Fashion’. We visited the workshop where a team of designers help the guests create outfits from used tents and other waste material, and took a chat with Siff. On Saturday they had a fashion show at the festival site with models street casted directly on the festival.
#1: Tell us a bit about the initiative and your role in it.
‘Unfair Fashion’ invited 9 upcoming Nordic designers to take part in the Unfair Fashion shop at the festival. We sell our own designs but we also make designs for the audience to sew themselves. The project focus on sustainability but all the designers do a lot of different things.
I have never worked with sustainability before. Of course I always strive to make clothing that last a long time, but it is not a mantra for me. First and foremost I think it is important that the clothes is cool and then sustainability should be natural part of the design.
The collection I did for the initiative is a unisex collection made out of leftover fabrics from the industry. It is sporty and colourful.
During the warm-up days we had a sewing workshop at the camping area. A lot of the festival guests came and made different stuff out of old tents. It was a great success. Some people even stayed for 5 hours to finish a shirt or a bag. We prepared different designs for them to copy, but they could also come and fix stuff or just make design something themselves.
#2: How is it to work creatively on a festival?
It’s great! I like that it is a different platform than usual. Here you make fashion that is for everyone and I like the interaction with the festival guests. I have always been at Roskilde Festival so it is great to try to be here as a designer as well.
I really like the Unfair Fashion initiative and I hope that this opportunity can be a starting point for me to build my own brand. It is great to try it out here at the festival with so many people to see my work.
#3: What have you created here and what is the best experience so far?
I made a jacket and shorts from the old orange festival tents. My styles are a bit complicated but I knew that the other designers made bags so I wanted to do something different.
This morning a 5-year-old boy came and made his own phone bag. He never tried sewing before but at the end he just sat by the machine himself and finished the whole thing. That was quite impressive.
I think it is great to see people experience that they are able to create.
Look at Siff’s work at siffpristed.dk.
Christina, Nanna and Tine.
