EBiT™

Enjoy Being in Transition™

A cultural brand with mental health at it's core:

EBiT™ - Enjoy Being in Transition™ - is a collective emerging to progress the dialogue on mental health in the fashion community. EBiT™ challenges our society status quo whilst normalizing vocabulary and conversations on the spectrum of mental health conditions, through creative concepts, collaborations and collections in fashion, music and art.

Social media is, overall, bad for our mental health.

Informed by the emotional upheaval of 2020, EBiT™ was founded by Simon Whitehouse in Brooklyn, NY at the height of pandemic lockdowns - a time of isolation and struggle for many. EBiT™’s cultural activations emerge both offline and online, with usage of social media only fleeting.

Image credit: Glen Luchford

Born with explicit homage to the creative legacy, cultural impact and independent spirit of Factory Records each artistic aspect of EBiT™ is catalogued with an “E: Enjoy/Ecstasy” number. The initial trilogy of 'Blue Monday' music mixes [E007] by Michel Gaubert, released by DJ John Digweed, compounds on from the initial logo artwork by M/M (Paris) [E001] as well as an offline project with famed photographer Glen Luchford, dubbed ‘Glen’s Nostalgic Momento’ [E002], which treasures a series of previously unpublished photographs taken by Luchford during a Radiohead concert in 1992.

Projects with notable cultural and fashion icons Indya Moore [E034] and Soo Joo Park [E022], intertwine with emerging artists from Brazil (Igor Furtado [E028]), Ghana (MichaelAngelo [E029]) and more. A fluid 18 month collaboration with John Skelton began with [E150] 'I Love You' in 2024 which referenced his return to society and the fashion industry after a hiatus with mental health and addition challenges.

Image credit: Indya Moore, by Igor Furtado

Luxury casual-wear EBiT™ clothing collections,  stemming from explorations into virtual fashion, and orbiting around music mixes, poetry and written art-forms, form a kaleidoscopic odyssey of creative projects all centered in their compassion and consciousness of mental health.

EBiT™ clothing is 100% Made in Italy.

EBiT™ clothing is described as a post modern, chic-casual mix up, reflective of both the times and the topic. Utilitarian denim and gabardine, blended with luxurious knitwear and progressive, high spec sportswear create a unique style and vibe that cocoons all genders. 100% Made in Italy, always.

Image(s) credit: Mauro Maglione

Casting in EBiT™ clothing campaigns centers real life personalities who live openly with mental health conditions, whether autism, bipolar disorder, depression, suicidal ideations, or other. One project for example cast a psychiatric doctor.

Featured characters also include those with compassion for anyone touched by mental health, such as psychiatric doctors, mental health advocates, and those who raise consciousness of the topic. Human beings who embody the spirit of the EBiT™. A communal strength in vulnerability and solidarity.

Image credit: M/M (Paris)

EBiT™ base is now Milan and Monza, Italy, as all clothing production is 100% Made in Italy, with responsible and ethical practices at the heart of the execution. A detailed personal account to EBiT™ written by founder Simon Whitehouse providing deep context around our mental health ethos, and our 'sustainability policy!' can be found in the 'Ethics' section of this website (see top menu). Simon has over 30 years experience in the fashion, luxury and sustainability sectors with previous CEO roles at JW Anderson (LVMH), Art Partner, Eco-Age, and Executive roles at OTB Group (Diesel), Matthew Williamson, Donna Karan/DKNY.

A fleetingly used social media account on instagram can be found: @enjoybeingintransition.

EBiT™ music mixes - dopamine releasing and emotionally soothing - can be discovered at: www.mixcloud.com/enjoybeingintransition.

Connection is encouraged and can be made: contact@enjoybeingintransition.com.

At its deepest and most philosophical level, EBiT™ is an exploration of how extreme capitalism has affected the mental health of society at large.

Like a caterpillar in metamorphosis, this cocoon is being manifested and unravelled in an entropic and organic way. Fashion, clothing, music, poetry are just some of the chosen mediums for this journey.

Image: Amaia Alcaide Anton, capturing the brain of a butterfly undergoing metamorphosis as new neurons are born through a process called neurogenesis.

-

With love,

EBiT™

Image credit: top of About section, immediately above and below: 

Sourced from ‘The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression’, published in 1862, by French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne. The book was a scientific and aesthetic text on the ways in which the muscles of the face create various expressions — a dictionary, so to speak, of what he believed was a universal, God-given language. While conducting experiments for his text, Duchenne partnered with Adrien Tournachon, brother of the famed photographer Nadar, to document the expressions he induced in his models with targeted, painless shocks. He charitably described his primary model ‘The Old Man’ as “an old toothless man, with a thin face, whose features, without being absolutely ugly, approached ordinary triviality."

In addition to its scientific value, Duchenne hoped the work would serve as a reference to help artists reproduce emotions and expressions more faithfully. Duchenne’s study of facial expression would prove groundbreaking. Among other achievements, he is credited with discovering the physiological distinction between a forced, “mouth-only” smile, and a sincere smile — also known as a Duchenne smile.

Duchenne believed that the human face was a kind of map, the features of which could be codified into universal taxonomies of mental states; he was convinced that the expressions of the human face were a gateway to the soul of man. Neurology did not exist in France before Duchenne.

Image credit: on home page, immediately above, and below: 

Sourced from ‘Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital’ by Adam Voorhes, 2014. Photographer Adam Voorhes was at the University of Texas to take a photo of a brain—“just a regular brain,” nothing special—for Scientific American. But the 100 brains he found in the closet, which were stacked two jars deep on 10-foot-wide floor-to-ceiling shelves, were far from ordinary. All, in fact, were malformed or somehow abnormal. He decided to investigate.

Along with journalist Alex Hannaford, Voorhes traced the history of the brains. Dating back to the 1950s, they belonged to patients from Austin State Hospital (once the Texas State Lunatic Asylum). The collection—rare for its size, age, and diversity—came to the University of Texas as a gift in 1986 (other universities, including Harvard, had tried, and failed, to secure the collection) after the hospital ran out of space to store it. It is currently being used as a teaching tool by the psychology department.

Among the brains were rare specimens including a “smooth brain” belonging to a patient who suffered from Lissencephaly, and three brains that belonged to people who had Down syndrome. “Many of the patients suffered from disorders that could be managed today. … I’m surprised they passed away in a mental hospital rather than an emergency room,” Voorhes said.

Donning respirators and heavy rubber gloves, he joined Dr. Neal Rutledge, an Austin-based neurointerventional surgeon, and Tim Schallert, a University of Texas professor, in a makeshift studio in the lab adjacent to the storage closet. For two days, they worked with the brains and Voorhes captured more than 200 images in total, many of which have been published in ‘Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital’ by Adam Voorhes.