COSE CARE

Project

267713

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Submitted

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS RISING STARS : concepts or ideas submitted by young talents (aged 30 or less)

Project title

COSE CARE

Full concept/idea title

Description

Cose Care is a service design project developed in all its tangible and intagible aspects. It is a home, a space, a laboratory in which people can renew their old clothes through recreational and co-creative activities that come in contact with their emotional sphere. According to the philosopher Remo Bodei we are able to construct relations of meaning with our things (cose) and through the art of repair we are able to enter in contact with them transforming them in beloved things (care). 

Where is your concept/idea being developed or intended to be implemented in the EU?

Please provide a summary of your concept/ idea

Cose Care wants to find an immediate solution to the problem of fashion waste. Considering different theories about things, and the reasons why people get rid of their things, it was demonstrated that when people construct a relation of meaning with their objects they will not throw them away easily. The idea behind Cose Care is to construct a functional and co-creative enterprise that works in different aspects of sustainability, taking as a reference, but innovating it, the Fab Lab system. Cose Care wants to innovate the meaning (using the theories of business innovation by Roberto Verganti) with which people relate to their broken clothes proposing an alternative choice that is to bring them in Cose Care where they can renew them and at the same time live a unique experience. Cose Care will be constructed as a large space in which it will be possible to finds different areas: a space with tables to work, a machines area (that includes all the different types of sewing and knitting machines), a warehouse, a café area, a library and a boutique. In this large space qualified personnel will be available in the following roles: designers, makers, trend researchers, professors and social media managers. The designers will have the role to guide the participants in the activity of renewal of the garment, by suggesting one of the six different type of renewals: RE-PAIR (the basic option to fix the garment), RE-DECORATE (embellishing the garment adding embroidery, buttons and so on),  RE-PRINT (add an artwork), RE-FASHIONED (transforming the garment in a new fashionable one), RE-MIX (combining different garments) and RE-BUILD (that includes everything that can comes in mind). Those operation will be taken in a co-creative way between the partecipant and designers and makers, with the aim of guiding the person in a new relation with the garment, that include a new experience, a new learning, and increased awareness. 

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of sustainability and how these would be met

The main objective of Cose Care is to be able to avoid the rejection of clothes and to reduce the need for new purchases. In fact, the clothes will undergo an upcycling process which will increase their initial value since they are made with hands, work and thoughts. When people work on their garments they are learning something new, they are living an experience, making a memories; for those reasons, those garments will not easily thrown away. It should also be considered that only by increasing the life of clothes by 3 months, it is possible to reduce the environmental impact on water, carbon and waste by 5-10%. But many other sustainable factors revolve around the idea and the main focus. Firstly, the Cose Care warehouse will consist of various second-hand clothes and fabrics: a part of these will be collected by purchasing it from the unsold collections of the small boutiques in the area, while another part will be purchased by the production companies for fabrics. that are not used, in this way these companies on the territory will be supported in their losses. Cose Care will also collect the unused clothes of all those who want to bring a bag of clothes, receiving a 15% discount on the Renewed collection, a collection created by designers and makers, with the help of trend experts, using exclusively these warehouse materials. In this way Cose Care will make up for the collection schemes of the rejected clothes, contributing to their recycling. Furthermore, from a cultural point of view, Cose Care will offer a series of courses on making, fashion and sustainability, with practical offers that through on-site courses and making activities support the tradition of Italian manufacturing passes it on to other generations. At last but not least, Cose Care will act as a circular model, because all the materials used will be unused fabrics, unselled garments and old clothes, that will undergo a complete recovery and without production waste.

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these would be met

The aesthetics of Cose Care is inspired by a text by Ettore Sottsass in "Molto difficile da dire", in which he, referring to his childhood, recalls the pleasure of "doing things" not for others, not to sell them to someone but simply the pleasure of doing them as human beings; and finally he affirms how pleasant it would be to have a place where you can do things with your hands or with machines and return to that creativity typical of childhood. This is why Cose Care wants to be a place that plays with bright and pastel colors, that recalls children's drawings, a place where you can find yourself at ease and where you can free yourself from the weight of "being an adult" rediscovering a carefree and creative atmosphere. The quality will be central, as well as the aesthetics entrusted to the design, which plays with curved lines, smoothed by pop tones, and by the reference to an almost imaginative, unreal world, but at the same time elegant, never banal. The experience offered by Cose Care is a 360 °, in which it is possible to do "practically everything": from taking a café in the themed cups, to reading a book on fashion and sustainability in the library space, to plunging into a warehouse created as a large walk-in closet, where you can find materials and inspiration for your own renewals or feel and live the experience of designers and makers, and learn how to do things with your hands or with machines. The boutique also wants to offer this experience, with the colorful mannequins with the patterns created for Cose Care, and the large showcase that gives space to completely original clothes, as unique of their kind and above all completely sustainable.

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of inclusion and how these would be been met

Cose Care represents a pole of reunion in the territory and a service that can be repeated in different cities and even in different countries. The kind of environment that Cose Care wants to create is an open space, where people can have the possibility to exchange opinions, thoughts, and even work together on their renewals. The experience can be lived in different ways, but the most important thing is that it can be lived by anyone. This for several reasons: first of all there is no age margin: they can be students, professionals, retirees, anyone can approach the world of Cose Care. Cose Care offers reasonable prices depending on the type of renovation (which can be done in a co-creative way or commissioned to designers and makers for those who do not find the time to dedicate themselves to this activity). In addition, various subscription methods are offered: the first concerns a renewal package of your choice, for those who want to renew their wardrobe in a sustainable way and at low prices; the second is a Fab Lab-style subscription for the use of machines, it is a package of hours to be used on the machines, useful for fashion students who cannot afford the purchase of such machines; and the latter instead wants to help young or even non-designers by offering them a warehouse, machines and professional help to develop their first collections and help them to be recognized by offering an exclusive sales channel. Nobody is excluded from the sustainability of Cose Care for any reason. The space and experiences are aimed at everyone, as well as the advertising campaigns, the team of professionals and every details will want to be inclusive and be able to represent each type of participant.

Please explain the innovative character of your concept/ idea

Cose Care is a completely innovative idea because it manages to create a profit (as represented in the business plan that I conceived in the project) by demonstrating that projects that embrace sustainability at 360° can offer new jobs, help businesses in the area, help the cultural heritage of the territory, innovating particular urban areas, but also offering collection services, and much more, while continuing to be projects with a large profit margin. It is very often believed that economics and ecology are two great antagonists, but as demonstrated by the philosopher Vittorio Hösle, economics is the only way to save ecology. Only through economic resources will it be possible to set in motion projects and processes that innovate our way of life, transforming it into a sustainable way of life that is good for the planet. Cose Care takes its cue only from the world of Fab-Labs, from Ramaswamy and Guillart's theories on co-creative companies, and then innovates these systems by proposing a solution that can immediately return a margin for improvement to the problem of fashion waste ( which every year continues to burden due to fast-fashion and the speed of consumption), and which at the same time works on the future by creating awareness and knowledge on sustainability and therefore changing the approach of consumers. On the one hand, Cose Care educates the territory to a new style of consumption, on the other it helps the territory to regenerate itself according to more sustainable and more creative systems, on the other hand helping companies in difficulty in the territory and the designers and creatives of the same. The innovative character is the whole engineered system that manages to generate a series of unique experiences and therefore not only offers new types of products, but new ways of living, spending one's time, living in the community and respecting the planet.

Please detail the plans you have for the further development, promotion and/or implementation of your concept/idea, with a particular attention to the initiatives to be taken before May 2022

For Cose Care I have created a five-year plan in which the first step is the initial investment in the physical place where to conceptualize and then put into practice the necessary areas and tools. This restructuring of the place, which prevents an accurate choice of the area in which it is preferable to establish the first laboratory, should be followed by the selection of partnerships on the one hand all those production companies in the area that want to sell their unused fabrics, as well as shops who want to sell their unsold collections, and on the other side fashion universities, who want to support Cose Care in offering courses. Subsequently it will be necessary to select the human resources through the criteria of creativity and savoir-faire to which to explain in detail the key pillars of the Cose Care project. It will then be necessary to build all the Cose Care online channels: website, app, and social media. Finally, create a promotional campaign that can explain and bring customers / participants closer to this new method of consumption. In the phases following the opening, it will be possible to rely on a promotion involving sustainable influencers, sustainability magazines, fashion universities and in general all the partners involved to generate as much hype as possible about the new project. The novelty and the size of the place could generate an excellent starting point to arouse curiosity in the area.

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed concept/idea has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Rising Stars Awards more than once in the same category.