13/10/05 13:10

from trash to fashion

by josep

Posted in Barcelona, Design, Marketing, Why didn't I think of that? | 1 Comment » Tweet This Post

Two Barcelona based companies and the City Council turn trash into fashion.

Some call it trash, others call it fashion. They call it trashion.

Demano (something like handmade in Spanish), a small company created by three colombian designers in Barcelona, recycle cultural event banderoles into bags, aprons or notebooks since 1999.

The idea behind the idea is cool: for a reasonable price you get to wear a piece of Barcelona’s cultural advertising landscape while riding the recycling wave.

The style caught up in the city and banderoles have gone in a few years from advertising to marketing and from culture to fashion, in such a way that Demano bags are a must in cool bars, design bookstores and fashion shops (this is especially true in the el Born area where I don’t know anybody living there who doesn’t own a Demano bag).

Not only the style caught up, business did too. Demano was in the Bread’n’Butter tradeshow for selected brands in Barcelona and presented this year’s collections in New York and the Netherlands, wining some awards along the way.

Further recognition came in the form of a competitor. Vaho decided that there was enough banderole cake for two, and created its own brand of recycled bags. They’ve taken the concept a step further though, and besides banderoles they recycle such things as supermarket carts into armchairs or oil barrels into chairs.

Even Barcelona’s City Council became a trashion victims; they copied this trash to marketing (re)cycle when faced with the problem of having a waste disposal plant inside the city (Besòs).

The solution? Take the waste (disposal plant), make it fashion by creating a designer space around the plant and hold a multicultural Forum in it. Advertise it on banderoles all year round that Demano and Vaho will turn into bags.

http://www.demano.net

http://www.vaho.ws

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