Brace yourself for Clothing Brand Experiment’s next collaboration project, it’s unusual, messy and partially illegal.  Combining the artistic skills of 4 local “alternative” talents, CBE has created a four-part extremely limited line of 16 t-shirts.  Each line will launch with a short video showcasing the production process of the four shirts being made with each collaborator.  The first video will be up on Wednesday September 8th with the other videos following each Wednesday after (Sept. 15, 22, 29).  These one of a kind creative tees will be will be available immediately after the video launch in CBE’s online shop for $44 each.

Filmed by Christine Lim

Music by Lodewijk Vos

Edited by Gonzalo Jimenez

Watch the first video Li-Hill ::: CBE Limited T ::: video 1/4 on September 8th on our SITE or on FACEBOOK or on VIMEO.

Suggest CBE to a friend from our Facebook page.

Bleach & Colour Spray/Sprinkle/Splatter

We decided to tackle the spray treatment ourselves.  We like to be DIYers whenever possible so we laid out the hoodies on the studio floor and went to it.

Then the treatments began…

Light Bleach and light blue.

This was Day #1.

Bleach, Stone & Silk Washing

We dropped them off at Rinken the following day. They would take care of all of the industrial wash treatments we had decided on; from various bleaching, to a stone wash and then finally a silky soft finishing wash.

A couples days later we went up to approve the sample that had gone through the series of washes, the sample was alright but not exactly what we had envisioned.  A few more days of work was ahead…

The pictures stopped as the work progressed, my apologies to you because one evening we had the whole line of hoodies hanging outside on the clothes line, the neighbors thought we were insane.  We added a darker blue and some more bleach spots to add more depth to the speckling.  The last night once our work was done we sat back, exhausted yet impressed with what we had done.  The next day we took all the hoodies back up to Rinken again for the final washes.

The Final Product

The next week we picked them up, they were amazing with all the wild natural shades we wanted and a nice soft finish.

This summer we’ve been watching the trends from our studios in Toronto to the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and beyond. Everywhere we look we notice people getting creative with clothing and we couldn’t resist doing the same!

So, we “modified” a few hoodies with a handful of techniques and the inspiration of Canada’s own beautiful Speckled Trout. The result? Meet the CBE Speckled Hoody:

Get your own piece of unique fashion by purchasing one from our online shop.

PLUS become a fan of our Facebook Page AND you’re automatically entered for a chance to WIN a Speckled Hoody! Seriously, we’re kicking off a whole month of GIVEAWAYS for CBE’s biggest fans and supporters…so make sure you’re a FAN and tell your friends to become fans for their chance to WIN FREE FASHION, too!

Suggest CBE to your Facebook Friends? We’ve made it simple.

Just click on SHARE link at the bottom of CBE’s Facebook Page and paste this status:

You may have seen me sporting a super-sweet, Canadian-made hoody…Want your own? Become a fan of Clothing Brand Experiment’s Facebook Page this week for a chance to win one!

Summer isn’t over yet. For the month of August all CBE T’s are $20, check out our online shop. You can also make an appointment for a fitting at our Toronto studio through emailing us. Otherwise, all the promotion details are listed on the CBE website.

We have Elly, you have probably heard about her already so let’s move on to some newer faces.

Alisha and Brittany both started back in April and have each been tackling some key tasks around here to make sure we are in touch with you all.

Alisha has been hounding our press contacts to keep them in the loop on our events and products.  She also enjoys a lot of coffee and love the Grey Hound.

Brittany’s cleaned up things on the social media front and has a few new project underway, including another giveaway you won’t want to miss.  She can be found most lunches ordering a wrap for lunch from Novera and keeps the rest of us in line with the functions and news of Twitter.

Later this Spring Marianne arrived with a line-up of skills.  From sewing to pattern drafting to fine baking she has been a daily help on all of the projects on the horizon.   She’s always up for some ice coffee and tackles projects fearlessly.

The newest to the team is Stefan who will be tackling our graphic tasks such as; hang tags, posters and hopefully a few more interesting and bizare projects, more to come in this area.

The first of our many projects has involved a few too many chemicals and with our lack of ventilation in the studio combined with the insane Toronto heat I think we all have become a little foggy in our brains.  It has been incredible to experiment with this project and I am dyeing to pick up the final line next week.  This project is the one that has to do with that Speckled Trout sketch we put up on facebook and will be a limited line.  Stay tuned August 9th.

The second project is insane and involves a handful of very talented people.  It is a five part collaboration series and will overlap with project number one and three.  It is always hard to give any details and not the whole story so all I’ll say is that it is going to blow your mind and will be released in video form.

The third and forth are going to launch in September I’m not sure which will come first.  One has involved a lot of stair climbing to a sewing studio on Spadina, it is also a limited line but that is all of the details I can give you right now.  I will let you know that biking from our studio to Spadina and then climbing up to the forth floor with patterns and samples in hand has been disgusting but will be worth it.  Oh one more details not to forget is a big thanks to Marianne our pattern drafter who has been paying close attention to millimeters and centimeters to perfect these pattens and also a thanks to Brittany and Alisha for spending a whole day cutting out patterns in the blistering hot studio, it would have taken one person at least a week to pull it all off.

So the other project for September is a collaboration with another company we love.  All I can say is miniature is always amazing especially when it is not human, what, weird, yes, it will be great, you are going to love it.

Well the fifth you all should know about already is our Winter 10/11 hoody line.  If you haven’t watched the video sequences for the Classic and Slim styles you should.  This line is extremely exciting to us.  We have just finished selecting every detail of our fabric blend that will be milled next week.  We looked at all of the fabrics we’ve used over the last few years and decided on our favorite qualities for this blend.  We believe you will melt into our newest fabric, it will be soft with the perfect amount of give.

The last of our project for 2010 will be pretty heart warming.  Not a usual description for a CBE project but this one is sweet.  We just started drafting the patterns, deciding our colour ways and all the rest.  It is somewhat predictable if you’ve known us for a while and will certainly draw a few new customers.

To finish off this post we’ll leave you with some photos.

CBE’s Limited Edition Speckled Hoody, drawing and step #1 of hoody treatment…

A wall of interest, location scouting for project #2.

Animal inspiration for project #3.

And some monster inspiration for project #4.

Project #5: WINTER 10/11 new hoody line, click on the above photo to watch an amazing video.

Potential colour ways for project #6.

The CBE/Vidafine giveaway is OVER! Thanks to all the people who applied through Facebook, Twitter and the Vidafine website!

The winners of the giveaway have been announced on the Vidafine website. Congratulations to Lori Clark and Debra P.!

We’ve been faithful readers of Vidafine.com for a few months now, which is why we’re so excited to announce that we’ve collaborated on a CBE CLOTHING GIVEAWAY for Vidafine readers and CBE fans! There are many ways to enter, and a number of awesome prizes to win!

THE THREE WAYS TO ENTER:

1) You can comment on Vidafine’s CBE Giveaway post by answering the following question: “WHAT is your favourite hoodie in your closet and WHY is it your favourite?”

2) Follow @vidafine on Twitter and RT: “@vidafine is giving away @CBEclothing! T-shirts, hoodies & more! Follow @vidafine & RT to enter!”

3) Become a fan of Vidafine on Facebook by clicking the ‘Like’ button. Then you can share Vidafine’s CBE Giveaway post on your wall!

WHAT YOU CAN WIN:

1) Two t-shirts of your choice, chosen from the CBE Clothing online store.

2) If the contest exceeds 200 participants, we’ll give away a hoodie of your choice to a 2nd winner chosen from the CBE clothing online store (excluding LIMITED hoodies).

3) Finally, if the contest exceeds 500 participants, there will be a 3rd winner chosen to win 2 t-shirts and a hoodie of their choice from the CBE clothing store!

So guys, the contest closes on July 18th at 11:59pm EST, so don’t miss out on winning free CBE gear, brought to you by our pals at Vidafine!

CBE and VIDAFINE have collaborated on a summer giveaway! Stay tuned for the launch tomorrow on the Vidafine website!