Will you help us? We want to challenge the whole way pants (and women) are pictured.

Next week we’re going to be in London – Hartland Road, near Camden market from 12-2 and Trafalgar Square from 4-6. And we want YOU to come along and answer us one question.

What three words sum up what you want from your pants?

We’re asking you this because we have a conundrum.

Here at Who Made Your Pants? we’ve always said we’re about two things. Amazing women and amazing pants. And it’s true. We think that our pants are gorgeous, and wonderful – they create jobs. How cool is that? And at the same time they are a little bit of fabulous for you, every day. They’re not about being looked at, about seducing, pleasing or appealing to anyone but you, the woman wearing them. They’re not about sexy.

We want images of amazing women wearing our pants. We don’t want to sexualise or objectify (and by that we mean that ‘slice of torso wearing pants’ style of shot as much as anything else) women. We want to show the amazingness of women – their strength, activity, liveliness, power, grace, sense of fun. And that pants don’t have to be about sexy. And in fact, they’re most often not.

But we really can’t think of many ways to take those kinds of shots. No pillow fights or ‘look we two girrrrls just happened to be in the same room pouting at each other’ – you know the type of thing we mean. So we want you to help us come up with new ways of doing things. When you tell us what you want from your pants we can start to use those ideas to help us.

And THEN it gets MORE exciting.

We’re working with Observer Ethical Awards ‘Best Dressed’ winner 2013 Ros Jana, and Dulux/Guardian photography competition winner Florence Fox and some other super (at the moment secret) women on this and we’re going to use these first answers to launch a photography competition this summer.

We’re going to ask EVERYONE WHO WILL LISTEN how they think we could style, shoot and make these images – and then one brilliant idea-haver will see their idea come to life later this year with a photo shoot, a wonderful model and a great photographer and it will be used to launch a new style of our pants.

So. There are three ways you can help

1. Come and find us in London 7th July and tell us what you want from your pants. Camden 12-2 and Trafalgar Square 4-6. We will be making ourselves obvious.

2. If you can’t join us, take a selfie/make a video telling us ONE WORD that sums up what you want from your pants and share it with us on twitter @whomadeyour instagram @whomadeyourpants #whatiwantfrommypants

3. Start thinking about how YOU would show women being amazing, in pants, and tell us on twitter @whomadeyour instagram @whomadeyourpants

We will build a montage of photos and clips that we and you take of YOU telling us this and then share that to help us get MORE ideas.

We want to change the way women are seen. We think we’re about more than being sexy. And we can’t wait to hear your  ideas for making that happen.

EDIT – July 2nd. We say above that the photo shoot later in the year will feature ‘a wonderful model’ – this is not to say that the winning idea has to include a single, solitary woman. It could includes twenty or two hundred women, – surprise us!

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Wedding bells are ringing in the changes

This summer, our lovely supervisor Zuhra is getting married. We’re all very excited for her and have asked for lots of photos.

There’s a tiny thing though. Zuhra is getting married – in Afghanistan. And she’s going to be away for a grand total of ten weeks.

Zuhra is – frankly – indispensable. We can’t run the factory without her. And so, after discussing various options with the team, we’ve agreed that they will have an extended summer break. The shop side of things will remain very much open – and we’ve been offering extra hours to ensure we’re stocked up – but the actual machines will stay silent from the middle of June until the middle of September.

As well as that, we have another team member who needs to go home for eight weeks, and one who is already away. It’s hard when families are far away – there is a balance to find that gives people the time to see their relatives but that also keeps us running with enough people around, too.

The team are actually pretty happy. This time covers Ramadan which is hard (and actually risky – needles! knives! machines!) to work through when it’s hot and one is fasting. And it covers the school summer holidays and a lot of small people are happy that Mum will be at home with them.

It’s going to be VERY quiet for us in the office, and we’ve (only half jokingly) suggested that the team leave us some lovely lunch in the freezer – we’ll miss Zuhras spinach and her mum’s bread, Samia’s aubergine and Yasmein’s beans – but we’ll have plenty to keep us busy and we’ll have a bright and shiny newly organised and better space ready for our lovely team when they come back.

So. We’ll be around – will you keep us company? We hope so!

With love from us all

Becky and the team x

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