EDMONTON -- A local woman is hoping to raise awareness and some funds for good causes as she creates a clothing line.
Brianne Helfrich recently created the clothing company Helfrich Collective during the pandemic to give back to the community and help herself out of a dark time.
10 per cent of proceeds are being donated towards the Canadian Mental Health Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness. For every 10 hoodies sold, one is donated to the WIN House in Edmonton.
Further collections that are released will have proceeds supporting different charitable causes.
The 23-year-old describes the clothing as having a ‘street wear meets comfort’ look. There are different hoodies available now with plans to expand to sweat pants and shorts in the future.
Helfrich said in an interview with CTV News Edmonton that she was going through her own struggles with mental health when she decided to take action.
“One day, I kind of just thought I need something to give myself a little bit of purpose,” she said.
For Helfrich, the clothing collection was just as much about helping others as helping herself.
“This whole year has felt very stagnant, especially for myself. I kind of needed to find something that would pull myself out of this depressed state.”
“I wanted to use this as a way to raise awareness on mental illness and hopefully help people.”
While Helfrich has no background in clothing design, she used her experience with modelling when she was younger and love for fashion to drive her ambitions.
“A lot of it is just a learning curve and I am just going with it,” she added. “I am just taking it as it comes.”
All of the orders are packaged in Helfrich’s garage and she sometimes gets help from her mom and dad.
“It’s a lot of fun and I love it.”
When she first started selling the clothing, Helfrich did not think it would be sold beyond her family and friends.
“I thought… (it would) be a very small thing and it has snowballed into this bigger thing that we are shipping to America, across Canada, and Australia.”
She hopes the clothing brand takes off and becomes a bigger platform to continue helping others.
