10 Things that people ask us
WHAT is LUtOPIA?
LUtOPIA is a design project based on the transformation of creative doodles - and children's drawings - into three-dimensional softies, handmade with love. Read the full story.
All Lutopians and friendly to nature: we are using up-cycled fabrics with natural fibers (donated shrunken woolen pullovers, most of the time :).
Their conception involves a special collaborative process between the Maker, a “godparent” who sends in the drawing and the creative Doodler who usually has no idea about the surprise.
LUtOPIA has an ever growing population and each citizen is truly unique and personalized. As an exception, limited soft-series are produced for special occasions, e.g. charitable auctions, special collections or the recent local ecologist rallies, when they were offered as gifts for the participating children.
WHO is LUtOPIA?
LUtOPIA was born as a game between me and my 2yrs old nephew, and became one of my favorite projects. I consider that it's success is simply a healthy and natural reaction of an environmentally conscious public against the overpowering force of mass production in the toy-industry.
Want to retail or distribute our products?
Please send us an email to contact@lutopia.ro.
F.A.Q.
Here's a list with the most frequently asked questions since the start of the project - please don't hesitate to write us if you have any other queries or collaborative ideas.
Q. What can I do in order to adopt a Lutopian?
a) if you fell in love with one of the existing ones from the limited series, you pick the model and we can see how to go along.
b) if you want to take part in the magical creative act, you send us a photo with a drawing waiting to be born.
Q. How much does it cost to buy a Lutopian?
A. Depending if you are ordering a unique Lutopian or buying an existing one made in small series. You can find the prices here and here.
Q. How do you decide on the names for the softies?
A. The children are naming (almost all of) their drawings themselves.
Q. When did you start making Lutopians?
A. It started as a hobby for me, in 2008-2009 as I was discovering the pure joy of playing Geppetto. But Life always seems to know it better: the word spread fast (especially after being "discovered" by Radio Guerilla who awarded us with free advertising in 2011) and lots of people started sending us wonderful drawings, asking for their own softies. And I simply can't refuse it when a new LUtOPIAN wants to come to life…
Q. What do you do for a living?
A. Actually, I am working as an architect and designer - while Tom still has his Sugar mamma + Sugar daddy who pay his bills :)
Q. What are the toys made of?
A. We're re-using a wide range of clean, natural recycled fabrics that include cashmere, wool, silk, cotton, viscose, etc. The softies are stuffed with 100% polyester fiberfill-balls (actually, this is one of my favorite German words: Klimafaserkügelchen :)
Q. How big are the softies?
A. The sizes differ, especially because my work depends on the format of the fabrics that I recycle. Most of the times we use woolen pullovers that shrank after being washed too hot. This obviously made my some of my friends happy - I received a couple of cosy shrunk cashmere pullies for my project. Do you also have one ?
Q. Wouldn't it be easier to just use new fabrics?
A. It probably would, but searching through my collection and matching colors and textures is so much more fun than shopping! And I believe in buying less and recycling more…