THE CHALLENGE
By valuing heritage, crafts and traditions, the Storytelling Garment Project gives them a new life, by keeping them in the collective consciousness. This enables the collaboration between cultural and creative industries and tourism sectors with Smart clothes that tell the story of local heritage.
THE SOLUTION
The development of a product and content that connects the consumer with cities and companies’ history and heritage, bringing to fashion 3 main innovative perspectives:
1. Discover and engage with Europe’s cultural heritage, reinforcing a sense of belonging to a common space.
2. Emotional relation as a key factor, increasing the life span of cloth.
3. Preserving and safeguarding endangered or “yet to be discovered” heritage (crafts, traditions, etc).
THE IDEA
The Storytelling Garment Project was born with the goal to value cultural heritage. Bainha de Copas believes that heritage and culture should be preserved, valued and disseminated: traditions, architecture, painting, arts and crafts and other forms of art; but also heritage management organizations, historical companies and institutions and municipalities that are considered national and European heritage due to its history, activity, people, technologies and products that impact and shape social, cultural and economic reality of countries.
THE BIRTH OF THE PROJECT
Bainha de Copas was founded in 2013. Throughout the years, its collections have evolved and adopted Portugal’s essence as its main inspiration like street art, tile work, arts and crafts and more. With this in mind, it has also expanded its work for the creation of exclusive and storytelling designs and garments for Portuguese companies with the intention of celebrating their history. It was with a wish to start telling the story behind our inspiration that led us to participate in the WORTH Project and it was when the Storytelling Garment Project was born. Because organizations are looking for new ways to connect and engage with the community, this project provides exclusive, proprietary, distinctive design and impactful products, made with quality materials, in a good packaging, conveying the perception of value that give a wider and inclusive meaning to new ways of spreading history. By telling these stories of material places, cultures, traditions, institutions and companies through clothes, those who wear them will always have a story to tell.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
As a project thought to celebrate culture, heritage and history, solid partnerships are crucial for its development. At Bainha de Copas, we explore the richness behind each story, design beautiful products develop enlightening transmedia content and tell those stories to consumers, creating exclusive experiences. Under the mentorship of the WORTH project, we were able to improve our idea, explore different business models and develop a marketing plan, increasing the knowledge of our team and preparing us to set and achieve new goals.
THE COLLABORATION
Collaboration is the key factor for the development of this project. The partnership developed between Bainha de Copas and SR Comunicación is of mutual benefit as the products created are perfect pieces of communication for any Organization’s heritage. This relationship has grown by the continuous exchange of ideas and research and new possibilities will, for sure, emerge.
THE FUTURE
It is Bainha de Copas’ goal to expand this project as a model with a vision to create a global cultural tour (constituted by bundles and transmedia content), workshops and promotional content and products that, through storytelling and design, value heritage in order to impact broader audiences. Thus, it is desirable for it to expand throughout Europe and create new joint ventures with clients and brand ambassadors, assuming different types of relation – franchising, joint ventures, valorization, exploitation, licensing, workshops, etc.
THE MESSAGE
As our brand statement says “Wear heritage from the heart”. This project was challenging and rewarding. We believe the WORTH’s mentoring program was of great value for the improvement of our project as well as the learning materials available for continuous growth. We also look forward to continue our project with other heritage management organizations throughout Europe and celebrate their cultural heritage and history through clothes.
