passport & packaging
As a child Sjaak Hullekes wanted to become an antiquarian because of his love for aging and narratives within products. Soon when he started working in fashion he found out that the fashion industry was not aligned to this love for aging and stories. The fastness of this industry in combination with an over-focus on financial gain make no room for a true story and emotional value. When setting up Hul le Kes this problem was one of the first things we wanted to solve; how can Hul le Kes make place for emotional values and stories behind clothes? The Hul le Kes Clothing Passport was born.
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The Hul le Kes clothing passport gives you information about your garment. Every Hul le Kes garment gets a unique code, to be traced back to our administration. This code you will find back in its passport, including the garment’s name, its date of finishing, date of purchase and material information. This information covers only the first page of your garment’s passport. The other pages are free for you and the next owners to write on.
Hul le Kes likes you to write down about the moments you wore this particular garment. At your wedding, at a special opening event or just when working in your garden. Share the moments you have had with your garment, just like you would do in a regular diary. Every moment counts and brings your garment back to life when reading it years, or even months, after.
But there is more to tell. Write about the moment you spilled wine over your garment, when you had so much fun at a particular party. Or write about the moment your garment got stuck behind a hook when you were trying to catch a taxi. About how and when this was happening but also about when it was repaired (whether or not by Hul le Kes with our Mending, Boro or Jogakbo services). By knowing the story behind it this repair will become a beautiful scar or tattoo; even for a next owner. Not just a repair, but the character of the garment. We love these stories, and so will a possible next owner or your heirs when you passed away at one point.
Together with its clothing passport your garment will not become just some ordinary old rag, it will become an item with value; emotional value. To the next owner it will never be just a second hand garment but a garment with a story. Like with antiques or inherited items in our lives. Together with our story we are sure your garment will have a longer lasting life and will be treated better by its next owner(s).
Whenever the moment comes you are not wearing your Hul le Kes garment any longer we are always happy to receive your garment, including its passport, back. We will handle it with care and make sure it will get a next life. Maybe as the garment it is with minor work done by our Recovery Studio, maybe to be used as material for new garments at our Manufacturing Studio. In any case your story, written down in the clothing passport, will be carried over to the next owner. Imagine all those stories combined; it would be a walking memory box handed over from person to person. Adding value every time, and making it more and more unique. A garment with its own narrative, its own character…
No matter where you buy your Hul le Kes garment, also our selected retailers get a Hul le Kes passport along with every garment they sell to you. It could be they forgot to give you one, then always ask if they can give it to you.
Each Hul le Kes garment with a retail price of € 200,- or more gets a Hul le Kes clothing passport. There is no passport included with garments below that retail price, nor with Hul le Kes interior or collaborative items. Neither do the Hul le Kes Services get such a passport. This has to do with the price to make these passports which are fully hand made in the Netherlands.
For all packaging we use we try to avoid plastics and work with existing materials as much as possible. This includes our hangers (always second hand), our hang tags (mostly found on flea markets), our boxes (made from cutting waste) and our packaging used for shipment. We are always on the lookout for more technologies which can help us improve our packaging towards the sustainable vision as we like to follow.
Whenever the time comes you would like to return your Hul le Kes garment for it to start a new lifecylce, this is the address to send it to:
Hul le Kes, Van Oldenbarneveldtstraat 79a, 6828 ZN Arnhem, The Netherlands
Together we will make a circular economy possible.