Embody the Message: Occupy the Mind This t-shirt / language project began in March 2006, when a small group of artists and activists decided to embody the historic words “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT” while doing a public action in New York City.
Shift Change Dress is a community fashion & art project that utilizes a shift dress sewing pattern as a medium for communication and action. Participants are encouraged to use the pattern as a blank canvas for their art or message and to share their work with the community.
(Taken from Group's Event Statement):
"The big banks have been playing monopoly with our money & our homes. On Saturday July 14th, as part of #J20 Bring the Fight Back to the Banks Week, let's return the favor..."
Lynn Neuman, director of New York City–based Artichoke Dance, became preoccupied with single-use disposability after she started wondering about waste and who was responsible for it. For some of her performances, she has collected massive quantities of discarded plastics, like bags and six-pack rings, and invited community members to contribute their own. “There’s a real aha moment when people see how quickly plastic amasses,” she says.
Matthew Shepard was attacked by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson on October 7, 1998, the victim of an anti-gay hate crime. He was pronounced dead on October 12th. Shepard's funeral was protested by Fred Phelps, notorious leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. The protesters bore signs with phrases such as, "God hates Fags", "No tears for Queens", and "Fag Matt in hell".
Kheris Rogers, an 11-year-old entrepreneur from Los Angeles, has made history at New York Fashion Week as the youngest fashion designer ever to present. Kheris became an internet sensation earlier this year after her sister posted photos of her promoting her unapologetic Flexin' in My Complexion apparel line.
"This project took aim at a public relations campaign produced by The Union Square Partnership, a local Business Improvement District (BID) attempting to privatize the north end of NYC’s Union Square park and install a high-end celebrity chef restaurant. They hosted historical walking tours of the park for decision-makers, as a means of getting buy-in for their development initiative.
When Behnaz Babazadeh was young, her family moved from Afghanistan to the US. She loved almost everything about her new home — especially America’s amazing selection of candy — but she also loved wearing her familiar pink-flowered headscarf, which she’d grown used to wearing as part of her school uniform in her old home.
A start-up has launched a line of clothing that confuses artificial intelligence (AI) cameras and stops them from recognizing the wearer.
Italian start-up Cap_able is offering its first collection of knitted garments that shields the wearer from the facial recognition software in AI cameras without the need to cover their face.
Called the Manifesto Collection, the clothing line includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts, and dresses.
Women took to the streets of Beirut wearing blood-stained wedding dresses with signs that said "A white dress does not cover up rape. Undress 522," referring to the number of the penal article in question. The demonstration was an act by the Beirut-based Resource Center for Gender Equality (ABAAD) association on December 6.
The Guerilla Girls are a group of feminist activist artists, who use facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture in their artworks. In 1989, they designed this billboard for the Public Art Fund (PAF) in New York, aimed to criticize the museum institutions for under-representing female artists and objectifying women.
An anti-Nazi organization called Exit-Deutschland targeted a right-wing Rock Festival in a city called Gera. They got in contact to the festival organizers by using a fictitious name, and they distributed 250 trojan t-shirts with a writing “Hardcore Rebels” during the festival. When the recipients of the shirts went back home and washed them.
The upcoming year of fashion shows look set to be charged with climate change and environmental themes.
This year, more than ever before, we have seen that the business of fashion, at the highest levels, is responding to the push to take the very pressing issue of climate change and environmental damage seriously.
The yarn bombing started with Louise Moerup’s school run in central Copenhagen. On the walk through the park each morning, she and her 10-year-old son would often discuss a naked statue of the goddess Venus there and wonder why there weren’t more statues of real women instead.
The Survivaball made its first appearance in 2006, when "Halliburton representatives" attended a conference on catastrophic climate change and demonstrated the functionality of the large inflatable suits ("a gated community for one"), which keep corporate managers safe from global warming. Not long afterward, in Berlin, the Yes Men learned they also work as disruptive, arrest-resistant tools.
IMAPCT are youth activists who view the creative arts and leadership training as a way to develop ourselves and change the world in a positive way. They believe that they must be the message that bring through hardwork, focus, discipline, unity and the principles of S.O.S. safe space, outstanding effort and service to their family friends and community.
When can fashion be considered an act of social activism — even subversion?
The streets of Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo’s capital (Congo-Brazzaville), have seen plenty of violence and suffering over the years. But a group of local fashionistas known has “sapeurs” are lifting spirits and celebrating life by following a simple commandment: Dress to impress.
Vivienne Westwood began designing in 1971 along with her then partner Malcolm McLaren in London. At the time, they used their shop at 430 Kings Road, London, to showcase their ideas and designs. With their changing ideas of fashion came the change of not only the name of the shop but also the décor. It was in 1976 when Westwood and McLaren defined the street culture of Punk with Seditionaries.
The Guerilla Girls are masked art activists who seek to bring attention to women in the art world and expose the unfair dominance of white males in the field. Their research into the racial and gender inequality in the art world is exposed through ironically worded public posters and billboards.
"On July 5, 2002, a strange new brand began cropping up in the streets of Barcelona. That day, at the height of sales season, more than fifty people rushed through the center of Barcelona to the Bershka clothing store to perform the very first Yomango fashion show.
“ARTICULO 6: narratives of gender, strength and politics” is an activist design project that aims to raise awareness about the case of forced sterilizations implemented during the government of Alberto Fujimori in Peru.
This action, to be released to the wider public this Friday, March 15th, was the design of t-shirts in support of British Charity, Comic Relief, an organization dedicated to bringing positive and lasting change to vulnerable youth communities in Europe (specifically in the U.K.) and various countries in Africa and, most critically, addressing the root causes of their poverty.
The protagonism of the body in the dramatization of marginalized groups is also central to Emilio García Wehbi's Proyecto Filoctetes, an urban intervention staged November 15, 2002, on the streets of Buenos Aires. The project consisted in placing twenty-five lifelike latex mannequins in central, highly trafficked locations around the city in varying positions of injury, physical distress, and abandonment.
Highlights:
A handful of teens donned puffy quinceañera dresses to protest against the “sanctuary cities” ban.
The teens gave paper flowers to lawmakers who voted against SB 4 and flyers to those who voted in favor.
Texas teens took part in a quinceañera-themed protest on the south steps of the Capitol to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 4, the so-called sanctuary cities ban.