Humanising Fashion With Collective and Research Agency Colèchi

Community Spotlight

Humanising Fashion with Collective and Research Agency Colèchi

Colèchi redefines fashion by fostering community experiences that inspire deeper connection to clothing and sustainability

By Caroline Garland & Lara Fank

Photos & Video by Immo Klink

Colèchi is a fashion research agency and collective with a mission to humanise fashion by centering people, planet and sustainability in their practice. “Our goal is to think about how we can make a new model of fashion, in reimagining fashion and change mindsets”, Colèchi Founder, Tina Wetshi tells us. Initially wanting to start a fashion brand, Tina Wetshi founded Colèchi together with her sister Piarvé Wetshi. But instead of simply making and selling Clothes, Colèchi organises research projects and several different events and workshops in collaboration with other designers and practitioners, such as the Clean Fashion Summit and a Knit Club, called ‘You can Knit With Us’.

“Our goal is to think about how we can make a new model of fashion, in reimagining fashion and change mindsets”

Colèchi Team

Disheartened by the capitalist co-option of fashion and eager to bring about change through community building, Colèchi started with a solutions-based and collaborative ethos from the get go. The value-driven collective continues to attract various like-minded change-makers. “I think we really started to foster those people who naturally started to gravitate to what we were building”, Tina explains. For their Clean Fashion Sumit, which then informed their recently published research journal ‘AGREENCULTURE’ on fashion and farming, Colèchi connected to textile farmers all around the UK, trying to find regenerative solutions for fashion farming in an urban context such as London.

The Colèchi Knit Club, YKWU (‘You can Knit With Us’) came to life after the Colèchi team asked themselves what a fashion system would look like that centres community and cooperation with people and the planet. For YKWU, Colèchi collaborated with various designers, knitter, friends and community members, no matter if they have studied knit design or are self-taught. Knowledge exchange and collaborative learning is at the heart of the knit club, which is open to all. As an alternative fashion initiative, it brings together people who are frustrated with the industrialised fashion system but don’t want to give up on fashion altogether.

YKWU Workshop in Collaboration with Erica Collins

The Colèchi team is convinced that personal experiences are essential to enable a mindset shift in fashion. The knit club allows participants to understand and experience first hand how long it actually takes to make clothes, to question how millions of products are made that are sold at fast fashion stores. This leads to a more profound appreciation of clothing and slow fashion practices.