Q. What is Start the Riot and how did it start?
Start the Riot is a project of the House of Riot aiming to empower young people to speak up and use their voice, by using mediums that they connect with, focussing on fashion now, but not limited to it. We want to foster empathy over apathy.
Start the Riot began at this past Australian Fashion Fashion Week. I painted 100 t-shirts with positive political slogans on them; slogans included «Reject Racism» «Sexism Sucks» «Clean Energy, Clean Country» etc.. The goal was to have a sea of people at Fashion Week being street styled and blogged wearing the tees and sparking conversation. I also made a zine to be handed out a fashion week if people wanted more information on the issues discussed on the tees.
Q. The quotes in your t-shirt are about different issues, what are they and why did you choose them?
The original batch that I made for Fashion Week included about 60 different slogans covering issues on Human Rights, Environmental Issues, Feminism, Climate Change, Racism and more. I was encouraging people who wore the shirts to come up with their own slogans or at least suggest an issue and we could work on the slogan together. It was important for me that this project was about people sharing their own voice and not just attaching themselves to a preexisting idea.
“I honestly had no idea
how far this would go”
Q. Have you achieved what you expected with this project?
Yes, and much more. I honestly had no idea how far this would go. Start the Riot was designed to only run for Fashion Week but due it’s success I have decided to keep it running. The biggest surprise for me was the global reach. It has been written up all over the world, America, Japan, Canada, Korea, UK, Denmark and many more. I also started receiving emails from individual telling me how the project had inspired them to take political action in their own way, which was the whole point. The whole experience has been extremely rewarding.
Q. What’s the next step?
Sigue leyendo «Australian model Ollie Henderson starts the riot!»