Grow your own linen trousers? Humanoddity bets on hyperlocality and makes trousers from the raw material up

The slow-fashion brand Humanoddity is pushing the boundaries of local fashion. Its founder, Daniel Weber from the Faculty of Fine Arts (FaVU) at Brno University of Technology (BUT), is now growing flax in a field to produce fabric for a new type of linen trousers. In his Brno workshop, they sew garments with details that have almost disappeared from the fashion industry: adjuster tabs, expandable pleats and hems that allow the legs to be lengthened. The goal is for the clothes to last as long as possible and, ideally, to be passed down.

But the mission of Humanoddity is not only to sew timeless and sustainable pieces. Daniel Weber, a student in the Graphic Design studio at FaVU BUT, leads an active dialogue about the impacts of the fashion industry—at educational events and on social media, where hundreds of educational videos have been created. He explains how fashion has destroyed the quality of garments, why shopping in second-hand stores isn’t always the better choice, and why luxury fashion is often a scam.

Two terms on your website caught my eye—hyperlocality and supernormal. Are they just buzzwords?

Not at all. Today, “local” production is often just marketing—the fabrics are purchased at best in Portugal or Turkey, and in the Czech Republic they’re only sewn together. “Local” has become a bit of a watered-down term. In my bachelor’s thesis I’m trying to trace the origin of the material right down to the raw resource. This year we sowed flax ourselves in the Czech Republic, harvested it, and are experimenting with processing it. It’s a material that used to be grown here traditionally, but today it’s hardly produced locally. That is hyperlocality for us—knowing exactly where everything comes from.

And what’s behind “supernormal” clothing?

The name comes from a Japanese exhibition that brought together everyday objects—paperclips or ordinary glasses. You don’t even realise someone had to design them. But that invisible design is often more timeless and most functional. That was the theme we applied to clothing. If a garment has lots of decorative elements, it loses universality and utilitarianism. Supernormal is a product concept pared back to the most basic and most functional. An example would be high-quality, plain T-shirts without prints.

Your patterns include elements we almost never see today. Why?

Today, corners are cut on everything, but we want clothes that more people can wear and that last for years. Ideally, so they can be passed on and adjusted by someone else. We take inspiration from history—garments used to be designed to be altered: hem allowances for lengthening trouser legs, pleats at the waist, buttoned adjuster tabs. We also use elastic in the waistband—it’s comfortable to wear and provides more freedom of movement.

Humanoddity in numbers

+5 years — redesigning society’s approach to clothing
210 — educational videos about the fashion industry
4 months — average production time for a single garment
+1000 — total number of garments produced
51% — average margin (typical margin in the fashion industry is up to 200%)

Do people buy your clothes mainly because they want to live sustainably?

I don’t use the word “sustainability” much, because its use is often self-serving. Our clothing isn’t cheap, so the target group is people who shop thoughtfully. There’s no impulsiveness. Some follow us for several years before buying their first piece—and I’m glad for that. People buy clothing from us only when they truly need it. On the other hand, it can also be a reflection of social status—a way to show others that I care about environmental issues and also have the means.

So it can be a more mindful choice and also part of one’s image.

That’s a good observation. It’s hard to say who truly lives it. You can’t “shop your way out” of environmental problems—that’s not the solution. It’s about thinking consciously about how to live, what to consume and what not to. Second-hand shops are booming today and people buy more expensive items there—say for five hundred crowns. But it’s often more of an emotional purchase: instead of four fast-fashion T-shirts, they buy one T-shirt in a thrift shop. The latter might seem like a better choice, but the level of consumption stays the same. People are just moving from one point of purchase to another.

What’s your favourite piece from the workshop?

Jeans made from a blend of organic cotton and hemp. The design took a long time to develop and they sell well. It’s our inside joke—we start from pleated trousers, but the material is dark raw denim. Today in shops you find pre-washed and ripped jeans, and that’s crazy. It means someone first had to make the trousers from blue denim, then someone else in a factory damaged them, washed them in chemicals and abraded them with stones. I didn’t want that. Our jeans will look worn only after they’ve lived their own story with the wearer.

I also studied why jeans have metal rivets on the pockets. Originally they were miners’ work trousers—they carried rocks in them, the pockets tore, so the rivets were added. It’s absurd that today people wear jeans to the office and the rivets are still there.

In one video you mention that fashion has destroyed clothing. How exactly?

It’s a huge business that in the last 10–20 years has degraded quality in a crazy way. The bar is low and everything is sewn with the goal of minimising costs. Bigger brands produce up to 40 collections a year, far more than they can sell. But it’s worth it for them—one item will catch on and be popular. If not, they’ll even burn the clothing. The fashion industry’s practices are frightening—some brands don’t deal with returns and simply destroy the goods. Handling a complaint would cost them more than making a new piece.

What role did BUT play in shaping the Humanoddity brand concept?

The brand started in 2019 in high school with my classmate Tomáš. Back then we just wanted to do things differently. Studying at BUT, however, steered me towards environmental considerations and production ethics. In the studio, as part of my bachelor’s, I’m working on flax as a typically Czech material and on the theme of hyperlocality. The practical output will be linen trousers that are made from the seed up. The sustainability theme is very present at the faculty; I feel that most people have already internalised it, even if it isn’t so explicit.