New European Bauhaus Rising Stars 2023

THE CREATIVE FACTORY SHOP is a workshop platform situated in a busy shopping district of Paris. It is not a regular shop and does not distribute clothes and accessories but the experience of being a worker, a designer or a craftsmen in remote production areas of France. It invites visitors to create their own personalized product by hands, with upcycled local materials, while learning skills and textile stories from national professional makers and facilitators. At a time when mass consumption is being denounced, it is the moment to invent new ways of working and distributing. THE CREATIVE FACTORY SHOP is an answer to reduce and re-use industrial waste while building bridges between the many actors of the fashion industry. Last November, we have imagined a prototype in Roubaix, France, during our research exhibition “MADE BY LOCALS (?)” supported by the French Ministry of Culture. We collaborated with textile and fashion enterprises, scholar programs and hundreds of fashion amateurs from the region. During the exhibition, the public could work inside a clothing production chain. The clothes conceived collectively with fabric dead stocks from local manufacturers, would then be sold in the shop next to the assembly line. To get discounts, visitors were invited to work for the platform. The participants were excited to learn new skills while discovering the many stories behind each fabric. The experience was perceived as therapeutic and empowering. However, most visitors were disappointed not to bring home their self-made product. As the idea of manufacturing impersonal clothes is getting less popular today, we will focus on the experience of creating a personal item for each participant at the CREATIVE FACTORY SHOP. Our workshop program will not be free, but this new place will function as a cooperative. Participants will obtain discounts if they work monthly for the platform. We hope to inspire the fashion world to become more inclusive through this new alternative.