How Good Luck, Humans Uses a Medieval Solution to Address Zero Waste

Writer and designer Apol Massebieau recalls how moving from a French province to a tropical surf town led her to Good Luck, Humans.

“How did you come up with the name?”

It’s a question I get asked very often.

My standard answer is that it was dusk and I was staring at my bedroom ceiling, when a flashbulb went off in my head: “Good Luck, Humans. Now that’s a catchy brand name!” It just sounds good. There’s no meaning to it, I lie.

Don’t judge me. There just never seems to be a right time for the truth. At a posh artisan fair where clients and friends come to shop and socialize, for example, how can I spill that the name stems from my dark thoughts of famine in the desert and drownings in the tropics; of how the planet’s too-fast warming will cause the populations of poor nations to die while the citizens of rich countries survive just fine.

Do I admit that the brand carries the name of my own confusion: Why do I continue creating when the world is burning?

It was around 2018, and I was five years back in the Philippines after spending a decade in the south of France, where I lived deep in the French provinces. My neighbors and friends in the Camargue region were frugal folk. As long as they were warm in the winter and cool in the summer, nobody seemed overly concerned about what they wore. Going to a vide grenier or flea market for used clothing and furniture was a regular activity. Friends with young kids would go to “baby trocs” to stock up on secondhand clothing, books, and toys.

Coming back to Manila after 10 years was a bit of a shock. Don’t get me wrong, I love the city where I was born, but exposure to another way of life opened my eyes to its consumerist frenzy. I remember visiting SM Mall of Asia for the very first time and having to step out after just a few minutes, intensely overwhelmed. There was just so much stuff. Back then, I lived in a four-bedroom house south of the metropolis, and a group of women would come and sew with me. We were making children’s toys (a story for another time), and I soon found myself uneasy about the enterprise.

There was the contrast between my old life in a quiet European province and my new life in a dynamic Asian city; and there was also Greta Thunberg. The Swedish environmental activist had just exploded into the public consciousness, and was telling me that the members of my generation had destroyed her future.

Thunberg’s fierce glare etched into my brain, I looked at how much fabric waste we were producing. Was I really part of the problem? So I stuffed the scraps into shopping bags and hid them, the spare bedroom becoming a purgatory for my trash and my guilt.

Thunberg made me think. I had always had this impulse to make things. One of my earliest memories was drawing dresses on white A4s, to cut out and make a wardrobe for my paper dolls. I identified myself as a creative individual, but then aren’t we all?

The impulse to create and innovate is integral to what makes us human. One might even argue that it is the best part of us. Yet how can we remain these wonderful, inventive creatures when climate change is wreaking havoc on the planet precisely because of mankind’s compulsion to make things?

As I do in moments when I need to think, I fiddle with stuff. I took out my bags of fabric scraps, cut them up into small circles, stuffed each with polyfill, and made them into balls. Then I strung the balls up into necklaces and called them lucky charms. Because, it seemed to me, we were in a real bind. The way out of the planet’s ills is to stop mankind in its tracks, yet we really can’t do that. Good luck to us, humans, I thought. There came the name.

Fast forward to today. I live in La Union, part of a surf town where instead of giant malls we have the beach, and where secondhand shops thrive. This place suits me better. The lucky charms became furniture, all made from fabric scraps. We made fun stools and ottomans, padded with puffy balls sewn from leftover textile. If I were writing a PR piece, this is where I would spin things to end as a success story; say that I somehow built a sustainable business using recycled fabric. I am, however, trying to write the truth here.

After we sent out a call for unused textiles, we were inundated with contributions from both households and businesses. Not set up to be a waste-management facility, our workshop ended up spending too much time and devoting a lot of manpower to sorting through the bags of throwaway fabric that came. I felt my sewing team begin to resent this labor. They did not sign up for this. There was also the issue of quality control. As we were relying on donated pieces of textile of varying types and in a range of conditions, ensuring a certain uniformity in our finished products was a constant challenge.

A serendipitous encounter with a community of women in Batangas who specializes in smocking made Good Luck, Humans change course.

Smocking is a medieval hand-sewing technique that gathers fabric, and in the process gives it shape and texture. Part of the reason I was drawn to it is that, invented at a time when textile was very precious, smocking uses the entire width of fabric in its making, resulting in minimal waste. We hardly ever have textile left over now.

It’s also a technique that requires a lot of time to make, and long years to master. I figure that this will serve as a natural control, preventing us from making too much and crossing over to the domain of fast fashion.

We haven’t entirely given up on the original technique we started with. Recently I fiddled again and came up with our Bubble shirts. They look a lot like the lucky charms, stuffed balls sewn on fabric but this time worn as a top. They’re a hit, and we can’t keep them in stock. 

You feel a rush when you make something that people covet. It’s as if you have somehow tapped into the collective unconscious, giving material form to fragments from mankind’s shared dreams. It’s always exciting, and my all-too-human self wants to make more. 

Then, I remember that in just the last few months of 2024, La Union suffered more than half a dozen typhoons. They hit us one after the other. One day, will my beachside apartment and this entire cove where it is built be submerged underwater? 

I remind myself that I must not make too much. 

By APOL MASSEBIEAU. Photographs by TARISH ZAMORA. Styling by NEIL DE GUZMAN. Sittings Editor TICIA ALMAZAN.
Producer: Bianca Zaragoza. Hair and Makeup by Rhoy Cervantes. Model: Tatiana Rodrigo of IM Agency Manila. Hair and Makeup Assistant: Jovan Gapasin.