Latest news with #Armedangels
Fashion United
22-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion United
Retail debut in Cologne: Armedangels opens first own store
Sustainable fashion brand Armedangels is breaking new ground. On Thursday, the label opened its first own store in its hometown of Cologne, Germany. Armedangels explained in a statement that the store at Ehrenstrasse 29 was conceived as a 'physical brand platform, design statement and strategic testing ground for the future of the brand'. Chief executive officer, Martin Höfeler, added in a statement at the opening: 'With our first store, we are designing the entire brand experience holistically for the first time. It is an important step to deepen the dialogue with our community and make our brand tangible in a physical space.' First Armedangels store in Cologne Credits: Armedangels The interior, with its deliberately minimalist design language, was designed by the Madrid-based interior design office DIIR. Christiane Bördner, creative director of Armedangels, explained the aims of the concept. She commented: 'We wanted to create a space that doesn't overwhelm, but invites. The store should feel open, calm and well thought out. Our customers should feel that this is not about staging, but about authenticity, about materials that last, about collections that focus on durability and innovation.' First Armedangels store in Cologne Credits: Armedangels This article was translated to English using an AI tool. FashionUnited uses AI language tools to speed up translating (news) articles and proofread the translations to improve the end result. This saves our human journalists time they can spend doing research and writing original articles. Articles translated with the help of AI are checked and edited by a human desk editor prior to going online. If you have questions or comments about this process email us at info@
Fast Company
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Wikipedia wants you to wear your love for an open internet on your sleeve
If you've always wanted to donate to Wikipedia but needed an extra nudge to do so, a new capsule collection by the German fashion brand Armedangels could be that reason. To mark Wikipedia's forthcoming 25th anniversary next year, Armedangels designed a 14-piece collection that turns design features from the Wikipedia user interface and experience into brand elements. Its signature bright cobalt blue, called 'hyperlink blue,' is a key color, along with white and yellow core colors. One design, featured on a T-shirt and sweatshirt, uses an iconic 1972 image of Earth called 'Blue Marble' that was taken during the Apollo 17 mission and is in the public domain. A text excerpt from 'The Blue Marble' Wikipedia page is below the image, which is one of the most widely reproduced images in the world and 'celebrates the freedom of knowledge,' according to the product description. Wikipedia's serif 'W' logo is featured throughout. The collection is available now via the Armedangels website. The Armedangels x Wikipedia collection includes items that equate knowledge to progress, with shirts promoting freedom, peace, and equality. Ball caps with slogans like 'Open Source of Information' and 'Yes, I know,' are fan merch for people who love going down multi-tab Wikipedia rabbit holes. The items range in price from about $16 for socks, $48 for hats, $57 for T-shirts, and $114 for sweatshirts. The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation—which also operates tools like Wikimedia Commons and Wikibooks—saw annual revenue of more than $180 million in 2024, more than $170 million of which came from donations (though it says just 2% of Wikipedia readers donate). Some hypebeast apparel might be able to nominally improve that percentage, and it comes as the site itself has become a political lightning rod, facing increasing attacks from some on the right. Armedangels says every piece is made from 100% recycled material, and 12% of sales proceeds go to the Wikimedia Foundation. It's 'sustainability meets free knowledge,' as the fashion brand says. 'Because when we know better, we do better.' Like the pro-reading, anti-book-ban capsule collection for Penguin Random House by Online Ceramics, Armedangels x Wikipedia lends street-fashion cred to book smarts—and it raises money for valuable education resources at a time when anti-intellectualism is on the rise, and our information ecosystem has become especially polluted.
Fashion United
23-04-2025
- Business
- Fashion United
Tom Tailor partners with Dutch repair platform Mended
Almost a year ago, in May 2024, Mended, the Dutch online platform for clothing alterations and repairs, expanded into Germany. Initially, this was through a partnership with Cologne-based sustainable brand Armedangels. This partnership proved so successful, generating 100 repair orders within 15 minutes of launch, that Mended is now collaborating with Hamburg-based clothing retailer Tom Tailor. The partnership is part of Tom Tailor's 'BE-Part' sustainability strategy and its loyalty programme. It responds to the growing demand for repair services, driven on the company side by new EU regulations such as the 'Right to Repair", the Circular Economy Act, and the Circular Economy Action Plan, and on the consumer side by the demand for practical, sustainable solutions. According to Mended, this makes repair 'not a trend, but a necessity.' 'We are not known for just fixing clothes — but how we engage customers and reposition repair as a desirable choice. Our partnership with Tom Tailor is a major milestone and shows that repair is becoming the new standard for fashion companies,' comments Mended co-founder Agnes Weber in a press release on Wednesday. How does the collaboration work for customers? Customers book their repair online via Tom Tailor's repair portal and pay a fee starting at 7.99 euros plus shipping. This service is available to all customers from today; loyalty members receive additional benefits such as up to 20 percent off on their first repair. After booking, customers receive a QR code which they can use to drop off their item at a local post point. All repairs are then carried out by Mended's tailors within Germany, without cross-border shipping. The repaired garment is then delivered directly to the customer's home within ten days. '72 percent of Mended users are first-time repairers. This repair number is growing steadily as brands are increasingly pushing repair across their marketing and loyalty channels,' reports Mended. Furthermore, according to studies, 64 percent of consumers want repair services directly from the brands they shop with – not only for environmental reasons, but also for the service aspect. Repair should become standard 'We are testing today what could be standard tomorrow. Repair goes beyond sustainability but can also play a key role in our loyalty programme,' confirms Maximilian Zippel, head of consumer engagement D2C at Tom Tailor, in the announcement. 'With Tom Tailor's large and loyal customer base, this partnership has the power to reposition repair as a modern and desirable choice for many. It is a big step in putting repair where it belongs — in the spotlight,' adds Weber. Mended also wants to change how consumers think about repair. While it was common a generation or two ago to mend clothes at home or take difficult cases to the trusted hands of a tailor, which were still plentiful, repairing and mending today has a rather old-fashioned feel. 'We need to move away from this dusty image and create new, appealing talking points,' says Weber. 'Shopping is an experience, but repair was not - so we changed that.' This also includes the repaired garments being packaged and delivered 'with a bow on top' to replicate the unboxing experience of new purchases. Tom Tailor x Mended. Credits: Tom Tailor About Mended Mended was founded in 2022 in the Netherlands by Agnes Weber and Daan Maasson. The company has recorded thousands of successfully completed repairs to date and won the Newcomer of the Year 2025 award. The company describes itself as 'a circular service platform that makes extending the life of clothing as attractive as buying new' and offers repairs, alterations and resale of clothing, as well as branding and marketing. Sustainable apparel brands such as Kings of Indigo, Mud Jeans and Armedangels are already working with Mended. In addition to the B2B service for fashion brands, the company also offers a B2C service and carries out repairs for consumers, albeit on a smaller scale. 'We mainly do this to collect data,' explains Weber. 'It gives us insights into which brands consumers want to have repaired, and we can also use this information to approach potential clients.'
