Born in Barcelona and shaped by collective resistance, this ten-piece upcycled capsule brings together a community-led fashion project and an experimental designer in a collaboration that turns discarded materials into a statement of survival, care and refusal.
From garages in Sabadell to a former factory in Sants, the story of this capsule collection begins far from the polished circuits of the fashion system. Created by Top Manta, the fashion brand founded by the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes, and Tania Marcial, the project marks the collective’s first fully upcycled drop. Ten garments only, not as a gesture of scarcity, but as a direct consequence of working with what exists: deadstock denim, rejected fabrics and the slow, deliberate time of making by hand.
The pieces were developed between Marcial’s home studio and the Top Manta workshop, a space where textile training unfolds alongside political organising, legal support and shared strategies for survival. Each garment carries visible interventions, traces of process and material memory. These are clothes that do not aim to impress. They hold tension, vulnerability and persistence. They speak of time, of repair and of staying.
Released in three small drops of three, four and three pieces, exclusively through the brand’s online store, the capsule resists the logic of seasonal fashion. It functions instead as evidence of a living structure that continues to grow. All profits are reinvested into the collective, supporting workshops, language classes, legal assistance and pathways for manteros to leave street selling behind while gaining rights, safety and stability.
Today, the project operates both as an association and a cooperative, grounding fashion in social infrastructure rather than spectacle. The message is clear and repeated without ambiguity: the system may label bodies as illegal, but dignity does not wait for permission.
This collaboration does not romanticise struggle, but neither does it soften its stance. Handmade and direct in execution, the collection asserts presence where absence was expected. Ten pieces that insist on visibility and on the simple fact of being here.
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