Festival fashion for the heart: create your own memories and put them on a t-shirt!
We’re not entirely sure how it’s happened, but we’ve somehow already found ourselves in the midst of festival season. Hell, Coachella’s already been, bared its toned, tanned midriff, and gone! For us – apart from the music, obviously – festivals are predominantly about two things: experimenting with fun new fashion trends, and laughing with friends until our stomachs hurt.
‘Festivals have become a bit of a British Institution. Let’s face it, we Brits are a bit of a mad bunch! Fashion has a big part to play in festival season (as do face paints!); it’s when people let their hair down and let their creativity run wild’. This is Ingubo founder Sam Baron, and he’s our kind of guy. Sam and the team at Ingubo have had the genius good sense to combine fashion and fun times by allowing users of their app to print any photo they want on to any of a number of different T-shirt designs. And when looking for the best T-shirt designs, you can see this company branded tshirt here for your best preferences!
Incessant selfie-taking and watching live bands through phone screens (so that we can share the video with various social networks at a later date, obviously) has led some people to feel we don’t just let go and have fun in the moment anymore. ‘Technology can imprison you’, Sam agrees …but it can also empower you. ‘I’m trying to do the latter with Ingubo in the fashion industry’.
This summer, we want to combine that fashion fearlessness and feeling of complete freedom that we love so much about festivals by wearing cute Ingubo crops and burn out tees emblazoned with our favourite Instagram snaps. The ones of us giggling with friends, of us basking in golden sun, of us crowd surfing at last year’s festival… Literally wearing our hearts on our sleeves, we’re pretty sure we’ll inspire real joy and laughter amongst our friends by reminding them of all the good times that have got us to where we are, in this very moment, without a care in the world.
Ingubo, Sam explains, was devised to bring the whole creative scene to fashion, not just fashion designers. ‘Technology allows so many to be creative!’ Not wanting to waste this precious gift that he’s so kindly bestowed upon us, we asked Sam where on earth we should start in designing our own tees: ‘I would try starting with an idea, not a design as such. ‘Who is it for?’ and ‘where are you going to wear it?’ are both good questions to start with’.
Great photos will always make great T-shirts, so as long as the image has meaning to you the design will be a success. But if you still need a bit of help to give that photo of you and the girls five white wines down at last year’s Glasto a slightly more fashion forward edge (understandable), there are no end of impressive apps like VSCO and Tangled FX to play around with. Hey, the best fashion designers always do collaborations, right…?
Happy to share those snaps with Instagram but maybe not so much with an entire field of people? Go for abstract designs or slogan tees instead. ‘My favourite designs that we get through are the work of amateur artists, designers, photographers’, Sam tells us. ‘Ingubo sees its share of weird and wonderful designs…’ With that in mind, you can make Reading 2015 the moment you really wear your heart on your sleeve, using a custom slogan burnout tee to declare your now not-so-secret love for the lead singer of a band. Wade your way through the crowds to the front of the stage to show your devotion, having layered up pendant necklaces, given the top a little 70s fringing and perfected the look with frayed denim shorts.
For those amongst you who well and truly fit the wildly creative stereotype and are therefore wonderfully artistic but perhaps not so hot on the organisation, Ingubo’s got your back. The speedy team pride themselves on their next day delivery service: one day a photo’s racking up the likes on Instagram, the next it’s in your wardrobe!
So, whichever festival you find yourself at this year, remember to be fearless with fashion, to let your braided hair down, and laugh until it hurts. Who knows, maybe at Bestival 2016 you’ll be wearing a photo of yourself at Bestival 2015…!
