You can spend almost a decade writing about fashion, and your laptop will still autocorrect lookbook to cookbook. It’s such a persistent, minor frustration that at first glance, ADIFF’s new book, Open Source Fashion Cookbook, looks like a typo. In fact, the cheeky name comes down to what’s inside: not runway photos or the behind-the-scenes images you might find in other designer tomes, but “recipes” for making your own clothes and accessories. The catch is that you can only use existing garments or materials as your ingredients.

The DIY projects range from simple additions, like a Perspex pocket you can tack onto a jacket, to more complicated, complete garments, like a shirtdress made from two button-downs; a bucket hat that repurposes a broken umbrella; or a 53-step blanket coat. Several designers contributed patterns from their archives, including Christopher Raeburn, Assembly’s Greg Armas, and Chromat’s Becca McCharen-Tran.

Those familiar with ADIFF, the three-year-old New York label by Angela Luna and Loulwa Al Saad, already know it’s a brand dedicated to sustainability and social justice. Many of their clothes are made with upcycled fabric, and their hero piece is a slick parka that transforms into a tent with the addition of a few poles. Launched in 2017, it’s sold on a buy-one-give-one model, with every jacket purchased providing another to a displaced or homeless person. It’s come to represent all of ADIFF’s tenets: that garments can be multi-functional, beyond simply clothing our bodies; that fashion should be both useful and inventive; and that what we wear should relate to the world around us.

In 2020, ADIFF planned to roll out a few designer collaborations, but they were put on hold during the pandemic. Luna and Al Saad spent the extra time sewing thousands of face masks for New York hospitals (they’re now available on their site, also on a buy-one-give-one model) and taking part in the Black Lives Matter protests. That’s where Luna found her inspiration for the cookbook: “It was the end of June, and I’d spent all this time at the protests and was feeling really frustrated by the industry,” she says. “All of these things were happening in the world, but I didn’t see them [reflected by] fashion at all. And that’s the reason I started ADIFF in the first place—to draw connections between global issues and fashion.” She felt particularly turned-off by the fact that even well-intentioned brands still ultimately ask us to buy something from them. How could ADIFF help people engage in fashion and sustainability outside of the traditional system?