Start Festival

On Wednesday I went along to the Start Festival in London, held in Clarence House courtesy of Prince Charles. I was there as part of The Green Thing, promoting our new project 'Saved'.

Part of our stand at Start

Saved is all about encouraging people to reuse and rewear old clothes. Four billion new tshirts are bought every year and a quarter of these never get worn, they just hang there in the backs of people wardrobes. Green Thing want to show people that you can take old, boring and rubbish clothes and still wear them. We use reclaimed and recycled fabric to cut into letters spelling 'saved' that we sew onto our donated, unloved tshirts to give them a new lease of life.

The Saved letters, waiting for eco-friendly customers to pick and choose what goes on their tshirt

This project is all about sticking with what you have and resisting the temptation to buy newer things when your old things are still perfectly good!

We've all spent the last six weeks sewing our fingers to the bone to get enough tshirts ready for Start.

Saved!

Each tshirt comes with a little tag telling you its story - what it was saved from, who it was saved by and who it previously belonged to.

Here is my tshirt that I saved and sewed and is ready to be loved again.

Sadly there was no sighting of Prince Charlies himself although there were quite a few celebrities there. None of which I saw with my own eyes but was told by everyone I was with that they spotted someone. I think I was concentrating too hard on sewing...
The festival itself was so amazing, full of great ideas and fantastic designs - the dance floor that powers itself, fleecy coffins, a boat full of children's ideas on what they would take with them into an environmental future, the most rehearsed curry-selling man ever, bee hotels and giant corks. What more could you ask for?