Fashion Camps by @Allegra Design GmbH - Design, Create, Style & Present
Our first fashion (design) camp took place during the 2020 sports holidays, shortly before the start of the Corona pandemic, in the premises of Näh-Punkt GmbH in Dübendorf with 8 children. Half of the participants were our own children and a friend. "Allegra Design" had previously offered sewing courses in our studio in Wettswil, but our (own) children found this incredibly boring. So we developed the idea of fashion (design) camps together.
At the beginning, the children and teenagers were allowed to "design" their own outfits and we sewed them together with them according to their ideas. However, it quickly became clear that many of the ideas could not be implemented in the short time with inexperienced seamstresses. We had to regularly work night shifts to ensure that the outfits were ready in time for the presentation on Friday.
Today we bring a large box of sewing patterns, around 30 rolls of fabric and around 50 ready-sewn sample pieces to the camps. This way the children can imagine what their outfits will look like at the end of the week. Our sample collection contains many standard items of clothing that we continually sew in the latest fabrics and colors. We supplement this standard collection with seasonal pieces based on current fashion and trends.
The children are allowed to try on the clothes and our now very experienced team helps them to put together their project for the week. This requires concentration and some time and patience. The outfit should fit at the end of the week. In a week-long camp, the children usually sew either two simple items of clothing (e.g. a top and pants) or a more complex one (e.g. a dress or hoodie), depending on their ability, age and the complexity of the project.
In the last five years, in addition to various events and workshops, we have held over 60 camps in 7 cantons and sewn around 800 (!) individual outfits. We show a selection of the sewn clothes on our Instagram page @MadeByYouForYou.