The truth is, I’m still baffled by the business of selling clothes. The concept of branding is even more foreign to an educator’s mind—we are in the business of un-branding, I mean, the teacher’s primary function is not to put a stamp on knowledge, but to create new knowledge through the heART-centered practice of building community where inquiry is the focus. I hear branding is about giving people the answer, but my business has always been to ask the questions to which the answers are deeply personal, impossible, and constantly changing.
What I know is this: “to wear is Human.” And to wear our heARTs out, divine. What I know is that having a purpose keeps alive all the music that’s inside us, and without it, we are at least 1/2 likely to turn ourselves into meat sacks made of stars we only notice once in a while. It can be that our only purpose is to hang out with our friends, and that is mine.
The original foundership of Be As You Wear was built on the premise that we would make love our aim, through the practice of professional friendship. Our model is intended as a laboratory that tests the limits of our thinking around sound relationship. Nearly every person who daily chooses life over drugs and booze has this one thing in common. Each admits we cannot do it alone. No way. No how.
The most ancient methods of healing are required in order to prevent or intervene. The research on effective ways to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy is thorough—and quantifiable. A relationship with nature, opportunities for adventure, encounters with creativity, and purpose-driven community are the common cures for our common maladies. There is no brand for this, there is only a way of asking, a way of being the answer.
Addiction is not the addict’s problem, alone. The substance is the problem for the addict. Addiction is a shared illness, and it affects and is enabled by every relationship that the addict seeks in order to feed the craving, which is the addict’s problem with the substance. Without help, it is all too much, for the afflicted and the infected.
Our service model and our product sourcing has increased in quality and sustainability by 3x in the last 2 years—and all spread by word of mouth and promoted solely through community events focused on fitness and fun(d)raising.
When you purchase a hoodie this Holiday season, you give the gift of eternal friendship as well as the opportunity for a young person to connect with all aspects of “nature” through wilderness leadership adventure and recovery immersions. No strings attached, but the heART strings.