Couchtalk with Rachel Freire

Rachel Freire is a specialist in knowing what people want. She has over ten years of experience in fashioning custom textile commissions and more recently is also working in e-textiles and wearable technology, with an interest in mapping data to the body. In this couchtalk conversation we ask her about her current jumpsuit collection and the specific instance of it that we are collaborating on as a personalized “North Facing” instance of this that we are making for her at KOBA.

Notes from the Conversation

People are often intimidated by the idea of commissioning something. They need to be provided options.

A collection of jumpsuits based on the idea that you have a uniform to wear so that you don’t have to think so much about what to wear. These jumpsuits will be practical, cool and for everyone. Meaning it will be unisex and you start by picking a base and then customize it with different features. The collection will be offered in three ways:
1) Standard garment – simple fashion shell
2) Bespoke version – well made, hardy/robust
3) Open Source – download pattern for free (make it yourself or have a professional make it for you)

Making the design yourself can be part of the process of figuring out what you want. Then once you know what you want you can go to a professional to have the final version made.

People are encouraged to modify the design and ideally would upload their changes and share them back with the community.