About Us
IDA TESS, WHO IS
Ida Tess is the brand of clothing and accessories produced by Parco delle Stagioni SRL Impresa Sociale using only fabrics recovered from stockpiles and production waste. We produce one-offs or in very limited quantities, due to (…or rather because of) the small size of the offcuts we assemble.
The name we chose for our brand tells of an imaginary woman with a great personality! A surname that is a synthesis of her life mission: ‘weaving’ clothes… and weaving relationships! Ida is her name And it is also that of a very special seamstress, whom some of us had the honour of meeting, and whom this project wants to remember. A family seamstress from Vicenza, a friend of her grandmother’s, a magician in baby clothes A humour all her own; a special woman with big blue eyes. Always enveloped in her cloud of cats and cigarette smoke, surrounded by fabric, Singer, needle and thread and Burda patterns to cut out.
THE SECRET CODES
On our garments you often find numbers and inscriptions. They look like mysterious codes, but in fact they are the indications with which the dyeing and finishing companies where we recover these offcuts mark the fabrics after testing them.
In Ida Tess we chose to make them a characteristic feature, always putting them in the foreground. In addition to making what you wear a unique piece, this is a symbol of a special concern for the environment, of the choice not to discard fabric but to recover and transform it.
WHO IS "PARCO DELLE STAGIONI"
Parco delle Stagioni is a Social Enterprise founded in October 2021; it is engaged in non-profit, general interest business activities. It adopts a circular and sustainable approach and aims to pursue the collective social interest also by favouring the inclusion of disadvantaged or disabled people.
It is a project for the beauty of human relations, supported in its aims by the venue that will soon host it: once ‘Villa Donà’, the splendid ‘Lady of Motta di Costabissara’, and its park. A historic place in our area that after years of neglect is being redeveloped and returned to life.
In the Park of the Seasons, people can engage in enriching activities: business opportunities and leisure activities. We will be favoured by the harmony with nature, the charm of a venue with a long history, and its welcoming spaces.
We are committed to the beauty that is expressed in people’s quality of life, in meeting and helping each other, in the value of human beings with their enriching diversity. We will form a group of unlabelled people who are united in their desire to do and learn and who feel proud and motivated to actively participate in a beautiful, growing group project.
Today, the tailoring workshop and shop are in a rented space a few metres from the future site. As soon as the site is completed, this activity will become part of a much larger project, extending to other camps held together by a very strong bond, that of their ethical purpose, respect for our land and people in their uniqueness. The other fields of activity will be the organisation of events and training sessions and the cultivation, harvesting, processing and serving to the public of fruit and vegetables grown by us.
HOW WE WORK IN COUTURE
We start by recovering high quality fabrics from remnants and production waste. We give them a second life by transforming them into accessories and garments.
We are realising how much working with recycled fabrics disrupts the typical stages of designing and making garments and accessories. The standard process is to start with the design idea and then move on to the selection of the most suitable fabric, in the case of UPCYCLING processing it is the fabric at hand that dictates style and design (for more, .read here), and in most cases, due to the small size of the available pieces of fabric, the result is a series of unique pieces.. Why make life so complicated?! Because the consumption style of the fashion industry is changing: we buy twice as many clothes and use them half the time. And then where do these clothes end up? …landfill. Fashion goes faster and faster and induces production that generates unsold and therefore more waste materials to be disposed of This scheme no longer stands.
It is time to realise that textile pollution is a major problem and that we need to create a new consumer culture, centred on a better selection of one’s purchases and on the practice of recycling, the recovery of materials.