Sari Bennett - Funk You Up

When things fall apart at the seams

There’s something infectious about Sari…

If you’ve been trawling the markets like Olive Tree and Red Lantern, you’ve probably come across Sari Bennet and her Funk You Up label.

There’s something infectious about Sari’s enthusiasm. Each time I’ve left the market thinking about her: not just her extraordinary clothes, which not only look amazing but are an inspired mixture of design and recycling, but her irrepressible zest for life.  And I see other people captivated by her too. Here’s her story.

Funk You Up was born in 2006 out of a burning sense of urgency. I was becoming ever increasingly aware of the coughing and spluttering of our planet, being choked by growing piles of unwanted stuff all over the place and knew it was time to take action. If not me then who? If not now then when?

I discovered there is something incredibly healing and exhilarating about revving the discarded, sprucing up the dishevelled and injecting love into the tired and forlorn. A professional 'funker-upper-er I would be!!!

So I took a deep breath, gathered a drop of courage, a pinch of anything’s possible and splash of imagination and one random afternoon’s pondering turned into a healthy sustainable business

I am endlessly excited and passionate about my work. Being self taught in the realm of dressmaking, I delight in there being no rules to break and no designs too outrageous. I feel it's important that my designs be accessible to all shapes and sizes which is why I make to order as well as selling off the rack at local markets .

Discarded fabrics speak to me... I have found that when I look and listen very carefully they tell stories of where they've been. Sometimes sad lonely epic tales of torn pockets and neglect.  Sometimes long happy sagas of a thousand knee patches and eventually  death by love and mending. Some have travelled the globe. Some never been worn.

Each story is unique and interesting to me. My job is to write thier epilogue... Or rather the prologue of thier next incarnation... Because nothing is un-funkable!!! Nothing too old or drab to have new life injected into it. Our imaginations provide the fertile soil where dry dreary gardens can blossom once more.

You see there is a kind of magic that can only occur when things fall apart at the seams and are lovingly put back together as something new... We all know what I'm talking about here.  We have all to varying degrees found ourselves at the end of an uncomfortable road with no choice but to find a new way of being in the world. Oh the bitter-sweetness of letting go of who we thought we were!! The exhilaration of watching ourselves take on different colours, and become new again.

YES we have a job to do my friends!!! It requires great courage and letting go.