We had a big fashion show planned, big space, big sponsors, a lot of emails - some serious shit.

After a moment of focusing on other projects, we met to prepare the show but we realized that we were not really excited by it - a lot of emails to send, and a lot of limitations framing our creativity and decision-making.

We decided to instead do something closer to our mindset and way of working. Something intuitive, something fun, something impossible, something underground, something with no budget, something imperfect, something real.

So Fynn said “I think a show at my place could be fire. Let's cast random people from the street and let them wear their clothes for the catwalk‘’. We thought it was interesting to organize a show in the most casual environment. We liked to imagine the house packed. We liked the stupidness of the idea. What is the audience gonna think? These models are just people from the streets, they are not models but they become models for this moment. And what about the clothes? There are no clothes made, there are no clothes styled by us but just people wearing the clothes they would wear in the streets. So if this is a fashion show.. What is fashion? Who is fashion? could I be standing instead of the model?
- That’s what we wished people would question after seeing this show.

We thought it would be fun, we thought it was exciting so we decided to do it! 

The first step was to choose a date and make sure every housemate of Fynn was okay with hosting such an event.

The second step was to find people in the street that would be down to model for the show. The idea was that we would approach people asking them if they would like to model in a fashion show wearing the outfit they are wearing right now. If yes we would get their phone number and take a picture of their outfit. Later we would send them a message with more information. One and a half weeks before the show we started to go in the street and cast people.

We took a walk of a minimum 1 hour every day in Eindhoven to find people for the show. At first, it was really difficult to go to people and start the conversation as we were both quite shy and the first negative answers were quite discouraging. But we finally found a first interested potential model. It was a 60-year-old woman, walking alone in a side street, rocking a pretty classy, clean fit and carrying a Lidl plastic bag. She also had big sunglasses to add to the style. She first told us she was too old to model but as we explained the concept more in detail she got curious about it. She told us that she was interested because her daughter was a stylist so she “knows” about it. Although we were not sure she understood the idea, she seemed interested, so we took her phone number and took a picture of her. She hid the Lidl plastic bag in the picture as she thought that it did not fit with her fit. We loved the contrast of the plastic bag but we let her do it. That was the first day of scouting and the only person we found that day, but we thought that by repeating it every day it could work.
We walked in different zones of Eindhoven to encounter different types of people: In the city center, in Kruisstraat, in the TUe campus, in Strijp S … The zones where we had the most success were the city center and Kruisstraat. Indeed there were the zones with the biggest amount of people and also the most diversity.

One day we met two young guys in the city center one wearing a suit jacket and classy clothes the other one wearing sportswear. They seemed open and not in a rush so we approached them. They were flattered by the fact that we asked them to be models and seemed convinced that they had their place in a fashion show. Although they didn’t have such particular outfits they seemed quite confident about it and were happy to hear that they would have to wear their outfit. They felt grateful for us giving them this opportunity, we thought these two would come for sure. It felt encouraging.

In general, it seemed that people would always understand our statement: “We believe that fashion comes from people and the daily act of dressing” and it’s always after this sentence that they would nod, smile, or show more interest. But in most of the interactions, we would get a negative answer before even having the time to arrive at this statement. Yes, we got a lot of negative answers, around 80%. Of course, you have the people who ignore you or say they don’t speak English although they understand what you say. You have the people who say they are too fat, too old, too ugly, too short, too shy, etc.. You have people that get scared, take a step back, and say “no no no, thank you” with hand movements and leave. You have the people that take it as a joke and the people that take it as an offense “C’mon guys that’s not funny”.

So basically most of these people get confused, in their head fashion is reserved for a certain group of people and everyone knows fashion but no one feels part of it. And that’s also what we want to change. Because all these people ARE part of it, they influence it and get influenced by it. 

One other interesting encounter was Kaiko. We met him in a park, he was standing on a bridge over a small canal looking at the vagueness and smoking a joint. He seemed very fragile and we hesitated to go to him. When we arrived next to him he seemed surprised, and a bit scared, he didn’t know what to expect. Were we about to ask him for a lighter or to beat him up?
Once we started to talk he seemed more relaxed and interested but we could not know if he was really interested or just acting positive for us to leave him alone. We took a picture of him, got his phone number and left him. Kaiko had a really interesting identity and I remember being confused about who he could be. He had generous corpulence, mid-long blond hair, was wearing a white T-shirt and slim black pants as well as a small shoulder bag. He had blue nail polish, a shy smile, and a soft voice. He had a very androgynous identity that confused me, I could not put that person in any case. He seemed to care about his appearance so we wished to see him at the show! 

We also got very excited after meeting Rechi and Hans at the Saturday market. One wearing a full camo outfit and a Van Gogh grocery bag and the other one giving us snoop dogg vibes smoking a cigarillo and wearing a beret. They both had a very unique identity. The clothes they wore seemed to harmonize with their persona, they truly had their style with its own outlines.

It was during one of our last scouting walks a few days before the show that we came across the one and only: Thierry Jones.
Thierry Jones is an old friend of ours, a singer trying to make his way in the Dutch music industry. Although he is not the tallest you can’t miss him in the Eindhoven crowd and if you spend some time in the city you will see him appear in the most extravagant outfits, canes, hats, sunglasses, Philipp Plein or Louboutin, for him it’s never too much. He is as friendly as he is over the top and he sings as well as he dresses. We had to invite him because he can transmit good vibes and can make people feel comfortable - we just thought this runway was also there for people like him, the daily fashions, the extravagant. Thierry was hyped, he didn’t only want to walk our show but he proposed to us to showcase a few of his last singles before the show. What a perfect plan.

We could not dream better, He said “Mathis send me a message, I come and I perform”. 

After one and a half weeks of everyday scouting, we had asked over 200 people and had the numbers and pictures of around 40 people. Of these 40 people around 20 answered positively but it felt impossible for us to know who would come.

We thought: “If just one person shows up we will already be happy. Fuck it, we will make him walk twenty times”.