Can design contribute to healing? Definitely, yes. Pure elegance isn’t able to cure diseases, but smart design and a relevant story behind it can enhance healing capacity of an object that isn’t originally created with therapeutic purposes in mind.
clothing & footwear
The sportswear major brand Nike teamed up with the independent Japanese artist Yuko Kanatani for the Tight of the Moment project, that merges athletic performance and offbeat artistic philosophy. Together, they’ve created a capsule collection that includes NTM-Magical Kaleidoscope tights and a bra with a pattern that highlights the key heating and cooling zones of a body in action.
Levi’s is partnering with the San Francisco Department of the Environment and I:CO on a newly launched project that aims to dramatically reduce textile waste. The large-scale Textile Reuse & Recycling Initiative that kicked off in San Francisco in early January encourages consumers to donate their old used clothing to recycling facilities through special containers, all to make San Francisco a zero-waste city.
Nike updates its sustainability-driven MAKING app with new features and an extended range of apparel and footwear materials that were analyzed in respect of eco standards. The new version of the application provides detailed information on the environmental impact of the materials that designers use in their collections.
Living with challenging mental conditions is always tough, but telling others about these problems might be yet tougher. The Living With: start-up T-shirt company, based in the USA, helps individuals who experience such disorders to declare this to the world using visual language—namely, through designs of their tees. The project has a charitable mission: a percentage from each sold T-shirt goes to Active Minds, an organization that helps destigmatize mental health problems on college campuses across the USA.
UNIQLO has released a cooking app for iPad and iPhone that matches outfit, food and music. For the “UNIQLO RECIPE” project the brand has tapped 6 emerging chefs from USA, three men and three women, to develop original and simple dishes inspired by the label’s LifeWear ethos, “Clothes for a better life, for everyone, every day.”