For AW22, Young Designers Showed What A Sustainable Fashion Industry Could Look Like - British Vogue
The whirlwind of fashion month can often sit at odds with the urgent need for the industry to address its environmental impact. While brands committed to more ambitious action to cut greenhouse gas emissions during Cop26 in November, there were few signs of what tangible action is actually taking place to achieve that – bar some stand-out moments at familiar names such as Gabriela Hearst, Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood, and new innovations at the likes of Balenciaga and Diesel.
What was noticeable, though, was the number of young designers championing sustainability this season. While the likes of Marine Serre, Collina Strada, Bethany Williams and Ahluwalia have made their mark over the past few years, a new wave of talent is also coming through – including the likes of Conner Ives, Harris Reed, and S.S. Daley, who all use upcycled materials to create their designs.
“I’ve always worked this way,” Ives tells Vogue, following his debut catwalk show at London Fashion Week. “Probably from the age [of] 10-years-old I was going into our linen closet, taking comforters, cutting them up and turning them into dresses. It was shocking for me, going to work for design houses [where] they were working from bolts of fabric.”
Despite only graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2020, Ives’s reconstituted designs, made from vintage T-shirts, jerseys and silk scarves, have already proved a hit, with the designer counting the likes of Rihanna among his fans. While sustainability is inherent to his designs, he – like many designers of his generation – doesn’t necessarily see it as being the selling point. “I would love [people] to buy the product because they think it’s a nice product, and through the process of buying it, realise that it’s sustainable and responsible.”
Ahluwalia autumn/winter 2022.
Acielle / StyleDuMondeIt’s a sentiment echoed by Priya Ahluwalia, who held her first runway show in London this fashion month, after choosing to present via film in recent seasons. “I’ve said from the beginning that sustainability is part of the foundation of the brand, but sometimes I think I don’t get my flowers for actually being a designer,” she says.
Still, the packed benches at Ahluwalia this season, alongside recent collaborations with Ganni and Mulberry, and the launch of her first full womenswear collection, show the growing reach of the designer – and yes, her sustainable practices. Continuing to grow her business in an eco-friendly way will be a key focus moving forward. “I want to show that you can be [a] thriving business while also being responsible – that’s my goal,” the designer continues.
For the likes of Ahluwalia and Ives, sourcing larger volumes of deadstock materials to match their runway or lookbook designs when going into production can prove a challenge. “In our first year, a store wouldn’t know what colours they were going to get [for our T-shirt dresses],” Ives explains. “We saw that as an advantage – you can know for a fact that this is a one-of-a-kind dress that no one else will have.”
Ahluwalia, meanwhile, launched Circulate in partnership with Microsoft last November in a bid to crowdsource unwanted clothing. “I wanted to create something that will solve an issue within the business [and] encourage people to engage with sustainability, ” the designer explains. “A future plan would be to figure out how to keep the B2C [business-to-consumer] elements but also open it up as a B2B [business-to-business] platform, so businesses could also submit big batches of [deadstock].”
Harris Reed autumn/winter 2022.
Marc HibbertWhile sourcing vintage and deadstock can be a time-consuming process, neither Ives nor Ahluwalia is concerned about running out of pre-existing materials. “If the industry continues at the trajectories that we’re going at now, I will never run out of T-shirts,” Ives says.
For more established brands, though, sourcing high-quality deadstock from mills can present a challenge, as a growing number of companies adopt the practice of use of leftover materials – as noted by Gabriela Hearst this season. “While [using deadstock] is a great disruptor for young [businesses], more established brands have a hard time tapping into enough deadstock or vintage materials,” Dio Kurazawa, founder of sustainable fashion consultancy The Bear Scouts, explains.
Although we may not see the entire industry transitioning to deadstock and vintage any time soon, there’s no doubt that young designers are playing a major role in disrupting the traditional business model. Ives, for example, has decided to show only once a year to allow more time for research and development, with S.S. Daley selling upcycled “drops” online alongside the brand’s mainline collections.
Harris Reed’s demi-couture approach, meanwhile, shows that exclusivity really does pay. Explaining the difference between his model and that of his Central Saint Martins classmates who went down the ready-to-wear route, he told British Vogue’s fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen: “They have to get all their orders out… What they make from four stores’ orders, I can get in a pair of trousers and boots. That sounds really rude, but there’s an experience there.”
Whether it’s moving away from virgin materials or embracing the art of slow fashion, these designers are showing how it is possible to build a brand in a sustainable way – and without having to sacrifice on creativity or style. The rest of the industry would do well to take note.
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