Trashion: the ethical fashion brands making waste cool

Every three years in Britain, a billion tonnes of clothing ends up in the bin. But there is a growing band of visionaries turning this waste into brilliant fashion, finds Rachael Dove
Bethany Williams
Rachael Dove23 January 2020

'I’m actually saving jeans from landfill as we speak,’ the fashion stylist Anna Foster half shouts down the phone to me from a warehouse in north London.

Foster is the founder of the upcycling label ELV Denim and is on a regular sourcing trip to buy some 200 pairs of otherwise unwanted jeans, which she will then wash, splice together and sell in her shop on Shacklewell Lane or on Net-A-Porter. ‘I am sourcing pairs I think I can make something out of. Rather than create a design and find material to go with it, everything starts at somebody else’s waste.’

Welcome to the trending world of ‘trashion’, where one man’s rubbish becomes another man’s pair of designer jeans. Fuelled by the environmental impact of the fashion industry’s issues with chemical use, carbon emissions, overproduction and waste, ELV Denim is one of a charge of young activist labels embracing upcycling as a business model on a mission to make the fashion industry less wasteful and more woke. Foster calls her company ‘zero-waste’; even her leather labels are cast-offs from a London belt manufacturer.

As fast fashion and our ‘wear once’ culture accelerates at pace (research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggests that global clothing production has doubled in the past 15 years) more ends up in the bin. The government’s waste advisory body Wrap reports that 336,000 tonnes of clothing were sent to landfill or incineration in the UK in 2017. Foster is spurred on by the particularly polluting denim manufacturing industry. ‘To make a pair of denim jeans uses the same amount of water that one person drinks in 13 years,’ she explains. ‘The water has been used [to create the jeans] already, so it is mad to throw the material away. Denim is a workwear fabric so even if it is old it is still such good quality and functions well.’ The proof is in the pudding. Not only do her jeans look like new but their soft, worn-in material and flattering barrel cut will probably suit you better than the pair you are wearing now.

On the London Fashion Week Men’s catwalks earlier this month, this upcycling mentality was the new norm. Ahluwalia’s expert shirts were made of a company’s excess fabric that would have otherwise been thrown away, and trainers came from Adidas’s deadstock or damaged stock. At E Tautz, 50 per cent of the exquisitely tailored collection was made using textiles recovered from clothes in recycling banks.

Leading the charge in London is 30-year-old Bethany Williams, who in December won the Fashion Award for British emerging menswear designer thanks to her pioneering 360-sustainability credentials. Ever left a tent at Glastonbury? It may have made it to Williams’ catwalk in the new form of a jazzy anorak or pair of trousers. Her studio is full of old canvas bell tents, which she screen-printed and made into unisex hooded coats and tailored trousers for her AW20 show. One coat was made from tiers of waste ribbon from a British toy factory, another from old blankets with the trim lining the lapel.

‘Finding wealth in our waste has to be the future,’ says the 27-year-old jewellery designer Eliza Walter, whose label, Lylie’s, uses only scrap metal, from the 0.2g of gold found in our binned mobile phones to bits found by metal detectors and shoppers’ unwanted jewellery offered in exchange for credit notes to be spent in store. ‘The disposable, commodity-based mindset we grew up with is concerningly unsustainable,’ she says. As a designer, does she feel a duty to do something about it? ‘Definitely. Every business manufacturing something has to think about each aspect of the production, product lifespan, repairability and disassembly of that product.’

Tracey Suen, co-founder of the pacey concept store 50m, points out that reusing is not new. ‘The difference is in 2020 there is some beautiful desirable fashion being made in this way. For instance, Duran Lantink takes deadstock and reworks it completely to make beautiful pieces in their own right, and Ed Curtis hand prints old hotel linen and crafts it into shirts. I think public perception of upcycling is changing with time and it’s becoming fashion that also has value. Even though a lot of our designers work with waste, the end product is worth a lot.’ When the store opened a year and a half ago good design, rather than ethical fashion, was the focus.

What’s more, these small brands with careful and slow supply chains are beginning to turn the heads of the big-gun retailers, too. This month Net-A-Porter has launched 45 more sustainable brands, including the upcycling labels The R Collective and Aaizél. ‘The want and need for sustainability within the luxury retail sphere is becoming more and more apparent from the way our customers are shopping,’ says buying director, Elizabeth von der Goltz. ‘More brands are definitely focusing on zero waste more by using off-cuts to create products and building business models around using surplus materials they have sourced.’

Which begs the question: is trashion just another trend, a gimmick or marketing ploy for bigwigs to jump on to sell more clothes? Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, fiercely disagrees. ‘I don’t even imagine how it could be considered a gimmick. In an industry that is hell bent on growth, upcycling is the ultimate slowdown, that is why it is so effective as an environmental solution.’

But first, De Castro says, we need to get over our problem with the word ‘waste’. ‘If we start looking at waste as a resource and we stop calling it “waste”, then it’s not going to be waste and everybody is going to use or consider it.’

1/OFF PARIS

1/OFF Paris

This is an old Burberry trench reworked by buzzy French brand 1/OFF Paris, which has just landed at Harvey Nichols. Its USP is reinventing vintage finds into entirely contemporary pieces, from ruched Ralph Lauren striped banker shirts to men’s blazers chopped in half.

ELV DENIM

ELV Denim

A favourite among the fashion pack for her super flattering straight-leg jeans, founder Anna Foster buys ‘denim that doesn’t sell and other people don’t want’ from vintage warehouses and has them made into new pairs at Blackhorse Lane Ateliers in Walthamstow. A bespoke service is launching this month.

BETHANY WILLIAMS

Bethany Williams

‘Blankets are much easier to upcycle because we don’t have to unpick them,’ says Williams, who often spends hours deconstructing pairs of jeans to reconstruct them into something else. The streetwear brand also works with a textile company in Italy, developing new materials from old books, tents and waste from her local community.

SEALAND GEAR

A Sealand backpack

Based in Cape Town, Sealand Gear picks up unwanted, yet still durable, fabric, such as yacht sails and canvas tents, and turns it into functional backpacks and duffels.

LYLIE’S

Lylie's earrings

Eliza Walter started the jewellery brand Lylie’s knowing that discarded electronic waste is a goldmine — literally. One tonne of electric waste yields 300g of gold, compared with less than 30g from the Earth’s ore. She also salvages precious metals from dental waste for her timeless designs, and sets them with recycled diamonds from antique jewellery.

BODE

Bode

New Yorker Emily Bode has captured the imagination of the menswear world — as well as the likes of Ezra Miller and Donald Glover — with her staples repurposed from bed linens, aprons and tablecloths, made new with whimsical embroidery and pattern design.

RAEBURN

Raeburn

Christopher Raeburn reworks transit blankets into reversible field jackets. Most impressive is his decommissioned air brake parachutes from military fighter jets, which he turns into bags, T-shirts and jackets.

UNSUNG WEAVERS

Unsung Weavers

‘We cannot foresee what materials we are going to come across,’ says Unsung Weavers designer Elina Tseliagkou of the woollen blankets she salvages to make into her beautiful coats. The plus? ‘Each coat is unique and can never be replicated.’ See for yourself at DSM.

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