In London, young designers pave the path to sustainability

19 / 02 / 2020

By Vogue Business - -

Christopher Raeburn was one of the first London-based designers to launch an upcycled collection, debuting at London Fashion Week in January 2009 with a collection of outerwear made from decommissioned military stock. While he was early to the sustainability space, he says the local fashion industry at the time was ready for change.

“Although I was pioneering with some of my work, the support network was already there to help elevate the work that I was doing,” says the designer. Raeburn was showing as part of Estethica, the British Fashion Council scheme founded in 2006 to mentor and spotlight sustainable designers.

The conversation about sustainability in London has continued to evolve. Designers like Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood have campaigned for years to highlight the need for more eco-friendly practices in the industry. And in the last 10 years an increasing number of London-based designers including Richard Malone, Dilara Findikoglu, Phoebe English and Bethany Williams have set up independent businesses focused on responsible design or changed their practices to limit their impact on the environment. Approaches vary: some designers, like Raeburn, use upcycled and recycled fabrics like Econyl and deadstock fabrics, while others swap synthetic for organic textiles and forego large stocks for made-to-order collections.

These smaller operations allow designers to be more nimble. They are also free to trial new textiles and business models more so than larger brands and multinational corporations, which usually need to report to a long list of stakeholders.

“The power of emerging designers and new fashion businesses is that they are able to exemplify new ways of doing business,” says Sarah Needham, knowledge exchange manager at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion. Larger companies can take note. Phoebe English, who stopped showing for three seasons to overhaul her business practices, believes young designers have the moral obligation to lead by example, signalling a shift in how this generation of London-based designers see their role in the industry.

“We don’t know if working this way is actually going to be beneficial to us, but there is no other way we can be working in fashion now,” she says.

Designers as solution makers

The common thread among designers like English, Findikoglu, Malone and Williams is the acknowledgement that operating a fashion business in a responsible and sustainable way is an ongoing process.

English’s approach is to focus on one issue at a time. She started by swapping plastic packaging for paper, a process that took her team of three around three months. Then she tackled overhauling her supply chain, replacing her fabric and supplier database with one that brings waste fabric and certified organic materials to the core of her collections. Her goal for Autumn/Winter 2020 was to use 100 per cent waste fabrics in her collection up from 70 per cent last season, but she doesn’t see a finish line. “It’s probably going to be a lifetime work,” she says.

Each season Bethany Williams, who works primarily with recycled and organic materials, starts by researching a social issue. She then finds a charity that provides solutions to that particular problem, teams up with them to create her collection and donates a percentage of her profits. To date the designer, who graduated from London College of Fashion in 2016, has collaborated with the Vauxhall Foodbank, the Italian drug rehabilitation community of San Patrignano, the Manx Workshop for the Disabled, female inmates at HMP Downview and, most recently, the Magpie Project, which offers temporary accomodation to mothers and under-five children in Newham. She says she is looking into transitioning her business into a charity or social enterprise.

“The climate crisis is a design flaw,” says English. “Designers are solution makers – if we know there is a flaw we know there is a solution to fix it.”

A different kind of growth

Making fashion responsibly is not always profitable or cost effective, something that Raeburn has solved by diversifying his revenue streams. Each piece of his Remade line, which he calls a “labour of love”, is individually numbered and made by hand from reworked surplus materials. His other two lines, Reduced and Recycled, focus on reducing waste and recycling garments respectively, and have more scope to scale as they are produced in collaboration with responsible manufacturers who have the capabilities to drive volume. Williams, who is sceptical of wholesale and has adopted a made-to-order model, mainly drives profits by consulting for other fashion companies.

“I’m not profit-driven and it’s not a profit-driven company,” says Richard Malone, who mainly designs made-to-order and keeps wholesale accounts for exclusive products. The Irish designer, who says that his business is profitable, had opportunities to commercialise his line but has chosen not to. Instead, Malone has built a network of private customers for whom he works on commission. “The luxury for me is getting to create whatever I want and not having one product that you make thousands of,” he says. “Sustainability shouldn’t be about making loads of things that are sustainable, because that isn’t sustainable either.”

The time might be ripe for those designers who want to scale, however. Raeburn points out that recycled materials went from a premium of 30 to 60 per cent on virgin materials to almost a parity of price in the last 10 years.

The future of fashion week

When English returned from her hiatus in September 2018, her new business model was welcomed by press and customers, but retailers weren’t impressed. “We lost stockists who weren’t interested,” she says. That changed after a year. English believes this change of heart has been mainly motivated by consumer demand and increased awareness within the public sphere. “It’s really important to educate people that don’t necessarily engage with fashion as design or as a business, but with what they wear every day,” says Williams.

Increasing environmental concerns have led the industry to question the sustainability and scope of fashion weeks. Raeburn, for example, celebrated his 10th year in business by hosting a fashion show in January of last year, which will also be his last. “Designers have an obligation to think differently about the way they are presenting,” he says. For emerging talents, however, fashion shows remain important tools of communication, discovery and sales. English sees opportunities in evolving the showcasing model towards a symposium where participants can come together to share information, swap notes, exchange contacts and find solutions together.

This openness in sharing resources is a novelty in fashion, where suppliers and manufacturers are usually preciously guarded secrets. But it’s becoming the norm for this class of designers. In some cases Dilara Findikoglu, who incorporates upcycled vintage garments, studio scraps, deadstock and organic materials in her collections, hasn’t been able to find fabrics in the right colour or thickness. Other times she couldn’t afford the minimum quantities required by the suppliers. She says that Fashion on Earth, the sustainability-focused Whatsapp group initiated by English where designers share contacts and information, has been instrumental to find suppliers.

“Talking to people is the biggest asset to a pathway to better practice,” says English.