DEPARTURES STYLE
DEPARTURES STYLE GETTING IT RIGHT 30 “Young people want top-quality clothes that last and support traditional savoir-faire” style, modelled by her friends and their daughters, attracts young clients who “care greatly about waste and its environmental effects and ask questions about the creativity and craft of these beautiful pieces. They want top-quality clothes that last and support traditional savoir-faire.” Japanese couturier Yuima Nakazato reached the same conclusion by different methods. Shocked by the dumping of Western clothing in a Kenyan landfill, he bought 150 kilograms of waste clothing there for his new collection. He then worked with a Japanese-invented dry-fibre technology to create fine fabric that he turns into beautiful, draped and folded, any-gender robes. Technology makes huge advances, but it needs to go faster, despite successes like this, and Siri Johansen’s Paris-based Waste Yarn Project, where surplus yarns are grouped into broad colour spectra and knitted according to a “wheel of fortune” – random computerised mixing of colour blocks and stripes that always seem harmonious. “It started as a design challenge when I saw the mills’ surplus yarn,” she says, “I didn’t want knitters to worry about choosing ‘correct’ colours.” The project is modest, and the most challenging buzzword is still “scale”. The way forward is indicated by Allbirds, a footwear brand co-founded by New Zealander Tim Brown in 2016 Clockwise from bottom left: Mulberry Lily clutch in metallic leather, mulberry.com; shorts and top in upcycled linen, paired with a pleated denim cape, by ELV Denim, elvdenim.com; an elegantly casual outfit by Welsh marque Toast, toa.st that is aimed at achieving carbon neutrality. It recently announced a carbon-neutral shoe, a tough item to make sustainably because of its complexity. It is made primarily of wool from one New Zealand farm that is carbon negative because of sensitive land use, and this offsets other carbon-positive components. Modern and streamlined, it meets Allbirds’ stringent requirements for comfort – but is still a prototype. Though Brown aims to commercialise the design next year, he can’t change the vast sneaker market on his own. Talk to the Italian founder of SQIM, Stefano Babbini, about the mycelium (mushroom fibre) that he is developing and you see the technology is there even if the scale isn’t. The resulting material is a tough and good-looking leather substitute achieved by low-input, high-tech methods. He has already collaborated with Balenciaga, but for the sake of future generations, scaling up needs perfecting very soon. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © ELV DENIM, © TOAST, © MULBERRY
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