Your Garment Stories
Trywyre 'Stop the Blah Blah Blah' Upcycled T Shirt
Trywyre is an electric vehicle company, passionate about encouraging people to change their vehicle as part of the fight against the climate emergency. Rebecca from Trywyre was a guest on the Where Does It Come From? podcast in August 2021 and then approached us to plan carbon neutral t shirts for their ‘Stop the Blah Blah Blah’ campaign after COP26. After initial exploration of carbon positive cotton farming to produce the t shirts, we agreed to explore an upcycled solution.
100% Cotton ‘Free Brittany’ T shirt
The first step was to find T shirts that had been created but never used, but that also fitted the requirements of the project in terms of print and colour. The project graphic had to be printable on the T shirt in such a way that its previous life was not too obvious – the Trywyre graphic had to be the star of the show!
This T shirt project saved 540 existing cotton T shirts from Landfill.
‘Free Britney’ was a high profile campaign to end the legal conservatorship of singer Britney Spears. As part of this campaign the original T shirt creator sourced 100% cotton t shirts and had them printed with ‘#freebrittany’. Unfortunately it was soon realised that the print had misspelled the singer’s name – in fact using the name of a region in France!
The T shirts were sourced from Wholesale Clearance UK, a company buying up and reselling unsold stock.
The T shirts were available in several colours but we agreed on white to really make the Trywyre graphic pop!
Creating the T Shirt’s New Design – Social Enterprise Partnership
The next stage of the process was to explore how to convert the T shirt print design into the required Trywyre message. Trywyre had already created a really vibrant graphic containing a QR code for people to scan to access their campaign. Where Does It Come From? partnered with social enterprise print experts RBLI to help design and execute the upcycled T shirt solution.
Royal British Legion Industries creates livelihoods for vulnerable adults including ex service personnel. We worked with RBLI to make an upcycling plan for the t shirts so they could be used for Trywyre’s campaign. Where Does It Come From? founder Jo visited RBLI to discuss design options – Mark and Colette explored options and came up with the idea of adding a thick black border to cover the existing slogan. Trywyre were flexible in changing their graphic design to fit in with this plan – true team work for the good of people and planet! Here is Mark, manager of RBLI Leatherhead.
Creating A New Life For 540 T Shirts
The 540 T shirts were then printed by hand with the new Trywyre graphic – a project which took several weeks due to an unfortunately outbreak of Covid at RBLI. As a social enterprise employing vulnerable people it was important to keep everyone safe. When the T shirts were completed they were delivered to Trywre for the next episode in their life story.
RBLI Print Manager Colette oversaw the printing of the 540 T shirts with the new design. Here you can see her expertly lining up the new graphic complete for coverage of the #freebrittany slogan. The QR code in on the new T shirt graphic will take the user to Trywyre’s ‘Stop the Blah Blah Blah’ campaign, helping them to choose and commit to making their next car and electric car. Where Does It Come From? was very proud to work with Wholesale Garments, Trywyre and RBLI to save these t shirts from landfill and give them a useful role to play in combating the climate emergency.
Where Does It Come From?
This project was managed by Jo from Where Does It Come From?, a social enterprise based in Suffolk.
Where Does It Come From? was set up in 2013 to create clothing and textiles that are kind to the planet and the people who make them. We also believe that they are kind to you too, because knowing the story gives you peace of mind that you are supporting projects that help the environment and are fair to the makers.
Every item we create comes with a code so you can explore its story, learning about the eco-friendly materials and processes and getting to know the people involved.
You can find out more about what we do and browse our website shop at www.wheredoesitcomefrom.co.uk
