THE STITCH Sustainability Beginner's Guide | Creative Matterz Fund
CREATIVE MATTERZ FUND PROJECT PRESENTATION
From 100 submissions, this project idea was selected as 1 of 10 by a renowned jury based on the criteria of sustainability, originality, inclusivity, impact and aesthetics. The Creative Matterz Fund has supported all projects with €500, mentorship opportunities and pr. Now you can see what the creatives have realized in the last 3 months and vote for your favorite project to win a total of €1000 in support of their work.
SUSTAINABILITY BEGINNER’S GUIDE
“We share change-making fashion brands and educate about responsible consumption. Our mission is to transform the fashion industry towards a circular and socially responsible system and drive businesses to serve the UN's SDGs. Regardless of your starting point in humanitarian justice and environmentalism, everyone is inclusively invited to be part of this movement.” - The Stitch
As part of the Creative Matterz Fund, we created a Sustainability Beginner's Guide for citizens who don't know how to bring their love of fashion and a sustainable mindset into everyday life. It introduces the social and environmental impacts of the fashion industry and offers action steps for more sustainable shopping behaviour.
The aim is to become aware of one's current attitude towards sustainability and fashion, to build on this to create a new sense of value and adapt one's behaviour accordingly. Are you ready to become a consumer activist?
MEET THE TEAM
“The fashion industry we both love was becoming one of the most polluting industries with life-threatening working conditions. We began to doubt whether we wanted to support it any longer. Instead of just being able to name the problems, we desired to find solutions that included those who were not being heard. From this, we founded The Stitch to combine our shared passion for sustainability, design and education. We have made it our mission to promote responsible consumption and production through lifelong quality education and learning, and socially responsible action. Collectively, we are asking for progress, not perfection.” - Melenie & Lilian, The Stitch
Melenie Hecker
Lilian Weiermann | ©️Mark Peckmezian
Melenie is an innovation enthusiast and wants to transform the fashion industry into a circular system based on algorithmic innovation. In dedication to responsible consumption and production (SDG 12), she is developing with the AI Design Competence Collective a sustainability self-assessment tool for AI fashion actors to reflecting on their customer data collection and adapt them for the SDGs. As co-founder of The Stitch, Melenie's work focuses on the fashion industry's intersection of design, education and sustainability, and show citizens how to be consum'activists.
Lilian is a purpose-oriented sustainability advocate guided by empathy and creative solution-finding within the fashion industry. She investigates washing practices and their environmental impact to develop a model for sustainable fashion actors that conducts customer education on textile care. As The Stitch’s co-founder, Lilian focuses on the connection of fashion, sustainability and production. Being responsible for curating sustainable fashion, she carefully collects value-based brands in line with aesthetics and responsibility towards the planet and people.
How did the Creative Matterz Fund help you realize your project?
Through the support of the Creative Matterz Fund, we have been able to communicate our information on sustainability and fashion with the necessary design tools and imagery. This has enabled us, among other benefits, to relaunch our homepage where we can share our projects, posts and link lists with our community in a more interactive way. So feel free to visit us. We are already very excited to find you there and exchange ideas and thoughts.
Who were your mentors?
Together with Cherie Birkner and Beagy Zielinski, we developed new ideas and ways to reach more citizens with our message. The exchange was a lot of fun and gave us diverse perspectives on our project, which greatly enriched our work.
What learnings did you have?
Through the Sustainability Beginner's Guide, we have learned how important it is to exchange ideas with different groups of people to move forward in sustainability in fashion. This project and the overwhelmingly positive feedback have led us to continue the Sustainability Beginner's Guide as a series on our homepage and Instagram. In addition, we have noticed that there is still a great interest in learning new content on this topic.
What is your vision for the future?
Our vision is a better tomorrow in which we have collectively managed to transform the fashion industry from a linear to a circular system that enriches both the people in its value chain and the planet. That is why we believe that only based on partnerships can we achieve this goal.
How can one best support you?
To achieve our shared vision, we are always looking for passionate collaborations, new team members and long-term partnerships.