From Off-Grid to Electric

The first time in off-grid and quiet Portugal, where the days feel slow and a bit disconnected from everything else, a group of fashion students gathers after months of pandemic isolation. Relearning how to be around each other while taking part in the Student Label Re-style project.

There is no pressure, no aesthetic to live up to, just hands working, conversations unfolding naturally. There is a shared feeling that re-styling isn’t only about garments, but about rebuilding identity.

What Chop Suey observes is an attitude that isn’t left behind in Portugal but follows them into Strijp-S, adapting to a completely different rhythm without losing its core.

Even in this super curated, hyper-designed space, the workshop still carries that same energy. Only now it’s surrounded by vegan cafés, oat milk lattes, and that yoghurt ice cream everyone ends up getting “just to try” and then posting five minutes later.

Image;Braaksma-Roos-Architectenbureau-Engine-Space-StrijpS-Ehv

The Lab that Offers Creative Collabs

Now they meet in Strijp-S, inside the Micro Lab, surrounded by steel structures, clean lines, and that city energy where everything feels curated, fast-moving, and a bit performative.

The workshop lasts three days and the concept hasn’t changed, finish what already exists and present it in a different atmosphere. Where Portugal is soft and open, this is sharp and industrial.

Where before they work in silence, here there’s a constant hum, machines, people, ideas colliding in a space that used to produce something entirely different.

Here every corner feels like a movie scenery, too good to be true.

You see students stepping into their own creations, styling pieces that were literally scraps hours ago, turning them into looks that feel  expressive and ready for socials without losing that experimental edge.

In between cutting, stitching, and reworking garments, there’s this constant shift toward documenting, phones out, cameras clicking, someone adjusting a sleeve while someone else frames the shot against raw concrete, steel beams, or a sunlit industrial window.

Creative Hubs and Concept Stores

In between sessions, the students drift through creative hubs and shop-in-shop spaces in Strijp-S, where vintage racks blend into concept stores, and nothing feels mass-produced.

Back inside the workshop, that same mindset becomes hands-on.

Fabric gets dipped into dye baths, colours shifting in unpredictable ways, while others experiment with printing technique, layering graphics and textures. Some are focused on hand sewing, reconstructing a piece stitch by stitch, or adding small embroidered details as personal signatures.

The process isn’t rushed, and it shows. The environment mirrors that energy.

The students are more aware of how they present, a bit bolder in how they style and move, naturally slipping between making, hanging out, and capturing it all for socials without breaking the flow.

You’ll see them outside the workshop, coffee in hand, discussing fits, swapping pieces. Scouting corners for quick shoots, using textured walls, metal staircases, or café interiors as backdrops. Here even a freshly dyed or half-finished piece can become part of a look.

And it never feels like they’re trying too hard, because the environment does half the work. The mix of foodies, creatives, and slow-fashion energy creates a shared vibe where process and aesthetic blend into one.

Blurring Boundaries

Strijp-S makes sense if you stop trying to label it.

What used to be a place built for mass production, efficient, structured, focused on output at scale, now hosts people who are doing almost the opposite. Questioning systems, reshaping ideas, and using the past not as something to leave behind, but as material to work with.

Industrial buildings still standing strong, combining expensive lofts with new ideas of social housing. Like the vertical forest, wiith trees and plants climbing up 19 floors. This proofs that even in the middle of concrete and steel, nature can be integrated into everyday life, without losing the urban edge.

This mindset has always been part of Philips, founded in 1891 by Frederik Philips and Gerard Philips, who believe a company should be more than production, it should be part of people’s lives.

In 1913 PSV Eindhoven, originally a sports association for Philips employees, is built to support well-being, connection and a sense of community beyond the factory floor. That spirit carries through in Frits Philips, who even at 100, chooses to watch matches not from a VIP box, but among the supporters.

Looking at the students in Strijp-S now, cutting, restyling, documenting, moving between workshops and cafés, feels like a new generation of makers, not producing at scale,not erasing but reshaping into something that feels like now.