I don't really know what to say about Andrea Crews in that IT is hard to define....what DOESN'T this French active creative collective do? I say collective because Andrea Crews is a culminative effort with Maroussia Rebecq being the founder. I say active creative because they mix it up fashion, art, music and a lot of fun, all the while, working with humanitarian projects, schools and communities to send out their message. What is the message? It's something that probably doesn't sound very to us but when Rebecq started in 1999 to recycle clothing to reinterpret them, Andrea Crews, the label was one of the first to really get the idea of 'post vintage' out there. She dramatically changes the raw materials so that in the end, they are beyond recognition...
She has taken her recycle and remake workshops all over the world...
If you plough through her biography and ideas, you get such a multi-faceted idea of what Andrea Crews is all about that you might end up confusing yourself. The confusion continues as you check out all the galleries in the different sections of her site; fashion, art and activism...
If you're a Parisian you might have seen her latest project a month ago at Colette when she participated in a SWAP project with art collective Item Idem. Hintmag and Playlust also got involved in the shenanigans. The thing that really strikes me about what Andrea Crews does, and also what another Parisian designer Sakina M'Sa did with her 'L'Etoffe des Heroines' project (which Georgina of Da Scaree Fash Post alerted me to...) are the genuine motives behind it. Labels like Noki which have a similar concept to Andrea Crews, are on the London Fashion Week schedule and their main concern is 'fashion' whereas Andrea Crews just wants to get the idea of recycling clothes and reusing stuff into the public consciousness, which though is an idea that we have all known about for years, hasn't REALLY taken off in the way that it should.
Her e-shop offers up a choice selection of what Andrea Crews does. Clothing wise, it is her TWIST range which seems to have yielded the best results for me... making tops that are vintage fabricated but contemporary in appearance. The onesies are also a good bet though and the floral one with the dropped crotch pants (you say MC Hammer/Aladdin, I say dropped crotch... what can I say...I'm a classy kinda gal...) is surprisingly getting my vote.
The jumpers are all jumbled up/messed up and some of them have a face on them... me like....
The e-shop might strike some as a bit 'fluokids' (that NR term is not popping up because it's just appallingly dated and irrelevant...) but hunt through and these leather collars, belts and braces would surely take anyone's fancy.
Vintage shoes get a revamp which prompts me to think about buying some mouldy old vintage pumps and doing something to them, for the sake of them being so cheap to acquire in the first place. 'Vintage' doesn't always mean 'sacred' and you're not necessarily going to be 'destroying' something if you jazz up a vintage piece.
So ok, the accessories do get a bit 'I'm posing for Super Super magazine' but as always, the surrounding context just needs to be tweaked to get these working.
