about us
Welcome to the kitchen!
meet Earl and Nico!
the team behind Forever Soup Co. 🥣💓
Who Forever Soup Co. is:
We met over a decade ago in South Florida through many mutuals and both ended up in NYC within a few years of each other. We were both lacking meaningful artistic enrichment post pandemic, so in 2022 we started crafting together and instantly became much closer friends. Within a year of casual crafting we committed to our idea of Forever Soup Co., a sustainable upcycling brand using only our friends old donated materials instead of purchasing anything new. We are self taught, always learning and we love passing our knowledge/skills to others. We aim to create a community where everyone can be their full authentic selves by relearning that making art is cool, joyful, and rebellious. irl our names are Arielle and Nicole, but we go buy Earl and Nico in this world- just picture those dudes stirring your soup and it all makes sense.
What Forever Soup Co. does:
Forever Soup Co. focuses on upcycling textiles, scrap fabric, donated and forgotten clothing - most of which is already destined for the landfill. We rely on these donations and use them as the base for all the clothes, bags, hats and accessories we create. By using methods like appliqué, embroidery, cyanotype, stamp carving and even tufting we’ve created some very intentional ways to revamp, repurpose, or reuse what we’re given. You can find us at any of our markets (check the events page) with our On The Spot Embroidery Flash stand where we offer to embroider directly on the clothes of customers: an accessible inexpensive way to fall more in love with the clothes that already exist. We forage and press our own flowers, collect outdated paper goods, and use those as the base for bolo ties and wall art pieces. We hope to build a class program called SPOON-FED by Forever Soup Co. where even people who think they can’t make art will be spoon fed by us. For now our main focus is on art markets around NYC, and slowly building a full menu for our online shop - enjoy our appetizers menu for now. We truly believe that Forever Soup Co. is a mindset - our brand is giving our community something to hope for and grow with.
Why Forever Soup Co. matters:
The mission of Forever Soup Co. is to build a movement towards community driven thoughtful consumption, upcycling and reuse. By bringing awareness to key environmental issues our planet is facing largely due to fast fashion and the waste it creates, we can focus on making impactful, meaningful change while having fun. Our purpose is to create one of a kind wearable, usable art that leads people to question where their things come from, how they’re made, and what they can do to make their things last longer. Whether donated to us, or traded amongst friends, we are helping to facilitate peoples growing comfortability with keeping their items out of the trash, and out of the hands of companies that send them to the global south. As we alter and create new pieces we make sure to emphasize the importance of using materials already in existence. While most everyone we meet shares the sentiment that they want to contribute to a more sustainable future, not everyone knows where to start. We finally thought: You know what? We can help facilitate a community of people that lead with generosity who believe that thoughtful consumption is the future. Forever Soup Co. celebrates the imperfections, hand makes sustainably, and upcycles perpetually.
Where the name Forever Soup Co. comes from:
A friend introduced us to the very real concept of “Perpetual Stew” : speculated to have been heavily common in the medieval ages, picture a soup pot that is forever cooking in the center of a village. Members of the community bring the scraps they've collected and add to the pot in exchange for stew for themselves. The pot stays cooking, food gets added back, nothing is wasted and it becomes, essentially, self sustaining. Depending on which culture you ask, there are many names: Hunter’s Stew, Hunter’s Pot, and of course our favorite - Forever Soup. We are in fact making a big pot of Forever Soup but with items traditionally seen as trash (old clothes, scraps, paper, flowers) and by doing so, we’re growing a community of people who are as passionate as us! While Co. can stand for company, we prefer the meaning behind our soup pot as a collaborative/collective - couldn't do it without all of you. The best way to think of our brand is this: like leftovers and scraps put into a stew, we’re giving these item’s new purpose. With everyone putting in what they can, and taking what they need, the pot will never go empty.
We dedicate our art and our business to our forever missed, forever loved KAJBE. You brought us together, you are remembered in everything we create, every laugh we share, every flower we press, and every kale we stamp. You made our world a better place and now we’re working to make the world as beautiful as you deserved it to be.