What have we been up to this week? Cutting snowflakes with scissors… lots and lots of them. This year, we’ve kept up with the tradition of upcycling office material and paper – from photo shoot backdrops to used printer paper to craft our 2012 holiday windows. Special shoutout to our window display artist, Koh Tomioka for constructing these great winter wonderlands.
We found this video on YouTube from a fan of our entrancing store window currently on display. Our Window Designer Koh Tomioka and our Creative Director Vahap Avsar alway try to have a little fun with our windows – you can check out some of our past ones here.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. – Henry David Thoreau
While we love designing garments and bags and making them available for people to purchase, sometimes it’s fun to do things just for the sake of doing it. A few months ago, a bunch of us were sitting around the studio when Aaron, our Women’s Designer told us about this great company called Greenaid in California that his friends run that makes Seedbombs, and how we should write about them on our blog. Our CEO, Lexy suggested that instead of just promoting them, we should use them to make something. It was then that the idea for the Seed Dress was sown.
Three dresses were then designed and handmade by Aaron and our design team to be put on display in our Union Square, Smith Street, and Park Slope store to celebrate Earth Day, after which a ceremonial burial will take place at a nearby park. All the components of the dresses are earth friendly, from the locally sourced organic cotton voile, to the seeds embedded in fabric cut into flower shapes. The beads themselves act as the enclosures eliminating any zippers or plastic buttons. Aaron’s inspirations for the design drew from spring, femininity, and environmentalism, and the look is slightly vintage, girlish, and light, with a modern fit and styling – a design that would look great both on a woman and underground.
For Seedsbombs you can purchase, check out our Seedbomb bracelets and vending machines available in stores at Union Square, Smith Street, and Park Slope.
Much like those industrious elves up north, our designers have all been pitching in to get our windows ready for the holiday season. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been gathering used materials like plastic bottles, newspapers, old twigs, and bottle caps, and finding discarded material around Brooklyn to build an “upcycled” set for our winter forest photoshoot. The set ultimately will be transported to our store windows in time for the holidays.
Plastic bottles turn into falling snow, and their caps into deer skin.
Found carboard pipes turn into spooky forest ground covering.
Recently, we got our hands on the documentary Wasteland, about the Brazilian and Brooklyn-based, modern artist Vik Muniz, and the scavengers collecting recyclable goods from a massive 321-acre landfill near Rio de Janeiro. Working with the collectors, Muniz repurposed scavenged landfill trash into large-scale mosaic pieces and photographs.
Watching the documentary while we’ve been finishing up the set has served as great inspiration to find more ways to creatively use discarded goods. As Muniz once said, “The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.”
Brooklyn Industries’ summer window installations have come to life with crepe paper streamers dancing in the breeze, simulating the movement of a cool gust of wind on a warm summer’s day. Stop by and feel the breeze!
Have you seen our new windows yet? Brooklyn Industries has launched a series of window installations in all stores using dozens of used inner tubes from tractor trailer truck tires. The sculptures represent an interesting cross between American industry and summertime fun.
The inner tubes were gathered from a New York-based industrial recycling plant that collects used tires from all over America, separates the tires, tubes and rims, and then ships the tire parts out to locations across the world for re-use. This form of tire recycling and others, such as repurposing tire rubber for asphalt, fuel, mulch and artificial reefs, is vital in the movement to alleviate one of the most problematic sources of landfill waste.
“We are upcycling an object vital to industry in America – truck transportation – while also portraying something naïve and playful. I think of floating on tubes in the summer, as well as the people who used them to make crude boats to escape Cuba in the 1990s. The tubes are rich with naiveté and a sense of freedom,” said BKI’s creative director, Vahap Avsar, of the installations.
Prior to installation in each store, the inner tubes were blown up in Brooklyn Industries’ warehouse and then painted or dripped upon with white paint. The voluminous sculptures were assembled differently in each store window and provide an artistic backdrop to Brooklyn Industries’ new summer collection. Stop by any BKI store location this month and take a look.
To learn more about tire recycling, click here. For information on how you can dispose of tires in the New York City area, click here.
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