The Fashion Filter is a young start-up project which has achieved great success over the last year and consequentially has been scouted for a prestigious Dutch Design Award.

Their digitally printed, colourful facemasks have proven popular and functional during the COVID-19 emergency. Coldenhove has supported this project by supplying Jetcol DHS®, Digital Transfer Paper. We recently interviewed one of the founders, Marina Toeters, to retrace the history of this masked success from its origins.
It was mid-March 2020 when the COVID-19 emergency started to spread severely throughout the Netherlands. Despite the initial reluctance, face masks became a mandatory part of daily life. At that moment Marina Toeters and the two founders of LABELEDBY. joined forces to initiate The Fashion Filter project.
Merging their years of experience in material and digital printing, combined with their massive penchant for creativity, The Fashion Filter came up with a brilliant idea: customisable face masks made of different layers. Their face masks have an outer layer made of sublimated hydrophobic material and a non-woven, 3-layer replaceable inner filter.

But The Fashion Filter wasn’t only about producing a nice, functional face mask. Their vision was to increase the social acceptance of wearing face masks. The community’s response to this brave initiative was incredibly positive! After their launch on 13 March 2020, The Fashion Filter face mask orders started pouring in.

NC: “It is amazing how you managed to bring this idea to life in such a short amount of time. Would you say that the collaboration with Coldenhove helped in this process?”
MT: “Having the right material and good local suppliers was definitely one of the keys to our success. Thanks to this set up, we managed to scale up our small production to one hundred and thirty face masks per day. This nomination is a huge compliment for us.”

The choice of using Digital Transfer Printing and local production enabled The Fashion Filter’s online pop-up store to offer customisable designs, yet limit the overstock and waste of any material.
At Coldenhove, we are proud to support new ideas and projects which not only contribute to shaping the digital printing landscape, but also give back to the community.

MT added: “Timing was crucial. By using Digital Transfer Printing, we could quickly set up a production workshop and become the pioneers of this idea.”

The Fashion Filter is a great example of how fashion can play a key role both in turning around society’s ideas and showcasing the value of local production. With Digital Transfer Printing we can support small productions in local business as well as industrial productions. The flexibility of this technology has endless possibilities and can be scaled from small projects to big initiatives.