Even during her business studies in Vienna, Sissi Vogler was constantly on the move: Naples, Milan, London, Sydney, New York. Until the globetrotter embarked on a longer trip to southern India and Southeast Asia at the end of 2011. The native of Salzburg started her trip to Asia to switch off. To leave her old job at a Viennese advertising agency behind. She switched off. Not looking for a new job, but found it anyway.
Too pretty to throw away. Discarded utility bags are given a second chance as bags.
The idea for her upcycling label REFISHED fair fashion finally came about in Cambodia. Inspired by the colorful fish feed and cement sacks that – little noticed – end up in the garbage (or on the streets) after their actual purpose and touched by people with destinies. Even today, there are still numerous victims of land mines, which can be traced back to the time of the Khmer Rouge. That is why – then as now – production takes place in a social workshop in Phnom Penh, in which people with physical disabilities work. Today, ten years later, the workshop is working at full capacity thanks to the REFISHED fair fashion orders.
It is important to us to make the world a little better by producing in workshops that employ, support and pay fair wages to socially disadvantaged people.
For one garbage. For the other raw material. For REFISHED fair fashion, everything that is hard-wearing but is thrown away or should be thrown away is upcycled. Just like the colorful utility bags that Sissi discovered in Asia. They are water-repellent, stable and very light. Perfect for sewing bags out of and thus extending their life cycle. The first two upcycling models, and thus the cornerstone of Sissi’s independence, bore the names – how could it be otherwise – CEMENT and FISH. That was in 2012.
Fair payment, integration of people with disabilities in the production process and respectful treatment of the environment are core issues at REFISHED fair fashion.
A year later, Sissi added the FLAGS line to the collection, which she had, unsurprisingly, made out of flags. Exhibition flags that are regularly discarded by the Bank Austria Kunstforum Museum. The bag lines, which now consist of rucksacks, mobile phone chains, XL handle bags, beach bags, sports bags, huge shoppers and small accessories, are supplemented by the SCHUH collection with espadrilles made from cotton remnants.
The REFISHED fair fashion motto: Ethics and style are not opposites!
Production always takes place where the material is produced. This reduces transport routes and makes maximum sense. That’s why the utility bags are made in Cambodia. For the FLAGS collection, Sissi works with an integrative workshop in Seestadt, which also employs deaf women, for example.
In the future, everyone should ask themselves WHERE a product comes from and WHO made it.
True to the REFISHED fair fashion motto, all products are provided with the place of production, material and the name of the seamstress. If you want to find out more about the producers: All the people involved in the production process are presented on the website.
You can always find material or products that you can save from the landfill or single use in order to make something useful and (again) valuable out of it. Sissy Vogler
At REFISHED fair fashion, mother and daughter work as a team. Sissi in Vienna – Mama Vogler in Salzburg. While the daughter is responsible for production organization, marketing and sales, mother Isolde takes care of the design. Sissi also inherited the penchant for “reuse” from the master women’s clothing maker, who sews a hot-water bottle out of a sweater, turns old armchairs into a visual highlight with a curtain make-over…
Every product at REFISHED fair fashion is unique and comes from a single source from the first to the last step. And to top it all off by maximizing individuality: Sissi and her crew also have “pimp ideas” like Happy Bommel, of course.
Available via their own online shop, numerous sales outlets (see website) and in the REFISHEREI in Vienna, REFISHED’s first own fair fashion boutique.
Discover the entire collection here. Click here >>>
