To Have and To Hold is an annual event which supports and celebrates long-lasting relationships between people and specific items of clothing. Together, these experiences form an engaged, collaborative process in which participants reflect on and create bonds with their chosen garments.
The project challenges the pret-a-porter logic of clothes consumption by encouraging fashion-oriented neophiles, who have a strong affinity to novelty and are unlikely to wear clothes from previous seasons, to reflect on trend-oriented behaviours and to engage in longer-lasting relationships with their garments. This alters perceptions of the existing market and brand hierarchies in fashion.
The experience begins in the therapeutic lounge of Liberty, where a personalised scent is produced, based on the wearer’s personality, their customary behaviours and the new item of clothing which they bought at the store. The scent reinforces the relationship they have formed in the first instance with this new garment and puts in place a moment that can be recalled in later years.