A Finnish brand is bringing high fashion to an unexpected venue: McDonald’s.
The Helsinki-based fashion label VAIN has just released a unique collaboration with the fast food giant. The brand used McDonald’s employee uniforms as the base ingredients for a collection of upcycled garments.
The uniform’s standard shirts and pants were transformed into billowing dresses, slouchy hoodies and tiny mini skirts, among other pieces.
“The clothes were designed in a search of new ways to use the worn-out workwear and to create new designs by using already existing materials,” said VAIN in a news release.
For the brand’s designer, the collaboration was an opportunity to connect with beloved imagery from his youth.
“When I was first presented with the idea of a McDonald’s workwear fashion project I was immediately intrigued,” said Jimi Vain, VAIN’s creative director and designer, in the release. “Growing up in a very rural part of Finland, there weren’t really any dedicated spaces for us to hang out as teenagers. The local McDonald’s sort of fulfilled that function for us.”
“Also, it was the closest we could get to global pop culture out there in the north,” Vain’s statement continued. “We spent many evenings, and made many memories, hanging around the local McDonald’s.”
The collection remixes those familiar motifs, experimenting with the iconic McDonald’s golden arch logo as a belt buckle, and mixing the brand’s red-and-yellow color palette with grays and blacks.
Finnish McDonald’s employees will have a chance to own the unique garments, the brand said. The 27 pieces from the VAIN collection will be available to McDonald’s employees in the country through an internal raffle, according to a brand representative.
But the garments are “just for fun,” a representative for VAIN told CNN over email — employees won’t actually be able to wear the remixed uniforms to work.
The VAIN collaboration isn’t McDonald’s first foray into the world of fashion. Earlier this year, the brand released a coveted, limited-edition collaboration with streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market.
In 2014, fashion designer Jeremy Scott took inspiration from the restaurant chain in his debut collection for the Italian luxury brand Moschino. The label’s Fall-Winter 2014 show featured uniform-inspired silhouettes and a Happy Meal handbag.
Cult favorite Vetements, meanwhile, hosted its Spring-Summer 2020 menswear show in a Parisian McDonald’s — and sent models down the runway eating french fries.
Other brands have also experimented with fast-food-fashion crossovers. KFC, for example, released two limited-edition “chicken bags” in a 2020 collaboration with legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld marking its 80th birthday.