Naoya Takahashi
JAMAIS VU
How might we utilize storytelling to increase the longevity of clothes?
JAMAIS VU is one of many possible solutions to sustainability. It’s situated in the fashion industry and takes a circular economy approach focusing on utilizing second-hand clothes.
What makes it exciting is that each piece of garment will have a tag with a Bluetooth Low Energy chip embedded to access the archive. It’s like social media for your clothes where you can save stories with pictures, videos, and text. Storytelling enhances the emotional connection to the clothing, and it becomes a valuable asset when you want to sell it.
Insight
We often have a certain attachment to objects. For example, souvenirs remind you of the time you visited that place. The same goes for clothes, and I wanted to play into this notion to connect with clothes. The current fashion status-quo is heavily superficial with status and brand names.
It’s also one of the worst polluting industries. I love fashion and hearing these negative things; I had to do something.
Through my research, I discovered that slowing down consumption is a good approach, but I took it a step further to create a circular system to help garments live longer.
Idea
JAMAIS VU enhances emotional connection through storytelling, and that helps to extend garments’ longevity. It also has an online platform where you can buy and sell clothes with stories, and you can also tell your narrative. Each story is saved in the archive which you access from your phone.
Storytelling extends longevity, which is one method of becoming sustainable and challenges the current fashion standard. The system also encourages users to sell rather than throwing it away to recirculate it back into the economy. So that it doesn’t end up in landfills or exported out to global south countries
Impact
By keeping your clothes nine months longer, it reduces 20-30% of carbon footprints. Whether one person owns it for that long or through multiple people, JAMAIS VU becomes a foundation to keep these clothes circulating in the economy. It also helps to avoid landfills as one garbage truck full of clothes are thrown in there every second.
The system is designed to help users slow down their consumption by romanticizing stories that come with their clothes. We all experience life differently, and the garment becomes the vessel to carry your unique stories with you.
