Style & Beauty Getting
Style & Beauty Getting It Right From left: The Endery’s bright knits use leftover alpaca yarn from its Peruvian factory for limited editions of each colourway, theendery.com; Raeburn’s made-to-order specials repurpose surplus military textiles such as parachutes, raeburndesign.co.uk; below: Been London’s bags are made from recycled-leather offcuts, been.london and vintage clothing to create offbeat clothes with a streetwear touch, each piece unique”, alongside Rave Review’s patchwork shirts made from wool blankets and Deadwood’s waste leather or fleece basics. Edgy French designer Marine Serre has a cult following for otherworldly designs that entail old silk-print scarves, leftover printed T-shirts, old leather jackets, vintage embroidered table linen, velvet flock panels or upcycled denim printed with her signature crescent pattern. Yorkshire’s Matty Bovan adds antique and “found” objects to the extraordinary knits that recently won him the prestigious International Woolmark Prize, while gender-fluid designer Harris Reed recycles wedding dresses and suits into non gender-specific evening wear. Preen by Thornton Bregazzi has used deadstock and upcycled fabrics for several seasons – romantic printed dresses are website exclusives and there will be bright patchwork prints and knits for spring. Copenhagen is the home of the leading conference on fashion sustainability, and its brands are super-aware. Independent designer Cecilie Bahnsen, known for romantic, modern smock dresses in subtly luxurious fabrics, introduced limited-edition Encore capsules early last year using previous seasons’ fabric and now makes to order to further reduce waste, a concept she has developed for her main autumn range (shoppers preorder so she can estimate how many items to produce). Popular Copenhagen brand Ganni does not describe itself as sustainable, but its latest collaboration, with award-winning, London-based, Nigerian-Indian menswear designer Priya Ahluwalia, is a statement of intent. She works with deadstock and vintage fabrics – in this case, Ganni’s own – but adds her 1990s-influenced, mixed-fabric style for her first womenswear collection. More utilitarian, Christopher Raeburn works with military surplus, notably parachutes and camouflage kit, to make rugged parkas and separates, though he also uses elements of them for surprisingly ethereal custom-made evening dresses. Bottletop, meanwhile, has built a brand from colouring (non-toxically) and interlocking discarded ring-pulls to make light, flexible handbags. Patagonia, a pioneer of making garments from recycled plastic, now has its full ReCrafted range, while Mulberry takes back its bags that owners consider too worn in order to renovate and reuse the leather. But perhaps the biggest move towards circularity comes from vast luxury conglomerate LVMH. As its empire stretches from Louis Vuitton to Celine, Givenchy to Fendi, it naturally has access to very fine excess fabric, and has launched Nona Source, a website where designers at any scale can order from a vast catalogue at very reasonable prices. As a way of helping young talent, it presses all the right buttons. But don’t expect to find familiar logos on the site – the destiny of that sort of excess fabric remains a luxury secret. ¬ PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ISIS MUR, PELLE CREPIN, © BEEN LONDON 34 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
