Meet nine designers who want change and who want it now.
Aurélie Fontan won the Vivienne Westwood Sustainable and Ethical Award and grows her own fabrics from fermented kombucha, sugar, bacteria and yeast. “My generation of designers have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to question established practices in the fashion industry.” Georgia wears all clothing Aurélie Fontan.Revolutions happen slowly and then all at once, in a rush, and then they become inevitable.
This generation don’t need to be told that the clothing industry is the second biggest polluter on the planet: they’ve seen the evidence with their own eyes. Over the past two or three years, many of the students I’ve met have told me how they’ve been radicalised and horrified by the wasteful practices they’ve seen on their work placements in the fashion industry; luxury houses, high street and international brands included.
Fashion students’ experiences witnessing the impacts of overproduction – warehouses of luxurious materials being incinerated, choking pollution generated by factories in China and the voraciousness of the American mass market – is beginning to cause a positive counter-movement. Orsola de Castro, the Founder and Creative Director of Fashion Revolution and pioneer heroine of ethical and sustainable fashion says she’s seeing a sudden rush of activism and innovation on multiple fronts now.
Conner Ives turns thrifted and second-hand T-shirts into new dresses. “Everything I do is informed by seeing the gross excess you’re confronted with in fashion on a daily basis and challenging it.” Bee wears dress Conner Ives. Shoes Helen Kirkhum. This new breed of change-makers are working to upgrade and improve fashion from the inside out. A brilliant example is Helen Kirkum, who stopped people in their tracks with her ‘re-mastered’ trainers, when she graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2017. Constructed out of dead pairs of trainers she sources from charity shops, Kirkum’s style shifted the needle in the wider world of sneaker aesthetics if not its practices. Nevertheless, Kirkum is an influential leader.
One of the most mind-blowing pieces of inventiveness this year came in the field of bio-fabric development. Aurélie Fontan, a BA fashion student at the Edinburgh School of Art, showed up at Graduate Fashion Week with a collection made out of fabric she had literally grown in trays under her bed. “It’s a recipe of fermented kombucha tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast,” she told journalists.
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