There’s something in the air, be it that thrift shop stank or the cinders of the fires of Planet Earth, but couturiers have picked up a scent. Recycled fabrics, upcycled materials, putting old swatches to work, even – dare I say it – thrifting came out in spades at Haute Couture Week in Paris.
Just as it should be, in my opinion. It is the couturier’s job to create fashion that extends beyond its previous constraints, that picks up threads of the collective consciousness and binds them together. We then get to absorb, reflect, consume, and (hopefully) find that what we’ve seen on the runway has defined some previously hazy concept within ourselves.
Not to say that eco-fashion is ill-defined, not by any means. In fact, as I write this, I become more convinced that environmental consciousness is low hanging fruit, that perhaps designers don’t deserve a pat on the back for highlighting an issue that has been so important for so long. Or maybe, instead, it is the very fact that couturiers are seizing upon concepts like upcycling as avant-garde that highlights how paltry the fashion industry’s eco-offerings really are (case in point – burning millions of dollars of deadstock).
Regardless, it is still the beginning of 2020 and far be it from me to smother the optimism birthed from a new decade. Any progress is good progress, no?
Viktor and Rolf: Swatch-cycling
Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren aren’t new to the eco-couture concept. Back in 2016, they started raiding their fabric remnant inventory to create their couture collections. This year, having exhausted their remnant pantry, they brought out yards of unpilfered fabric swatches and ran with the idea that out of scarcity comes creativity.
The result was what I can only describe as hipster-Little-House-on-the-Prairie with the usual voluminous silhouettes stitched together with a motley patchwork of floral swatches and crochet squares.
Literal tin-foil hats conjured the deft thriftiness of your favorite librarian‘s tendency to wash, fold, and reuse the aluminum foil lid off of last night’s casserole. Also, by virtue of their tin-foil-hat-iness, they implied that conspiracy theorists may walk among us (could they? Have they always? Is environmentalism a deep-state hoax? Good thing I have Info Wars on speed dial). Perhaps I haven’t thought this through completely, but the wacky, paranoid element of tin foil hats did little to legitimize the message of frugality in the interest of environmental preservation. Unless it was purely an allusion to the staff pot-luck’s leftovers.
Crescendoing the counter-culture leitmotif, many models had tattoos in gothic text with hokey catchphrases like “I have a dream,” or simply, “love” on their arms, necks or faces. It was clear that the design duo wanted the collection, like those before it, to be sweet, but not fatally so, campy, but self-aware – and to that end, I do think they succeeded.
Julie de Libran: eco-newbie (sort of)
The former artistic director for Sonia Rykiel, the Spring 2020 season marks de Libran’s second couture offering. In the interest of total transparency, I only discovered her this year and was delighted to see that she, like Viktor and Rolf, raids the remnants bin for about half of her collections.
While not new to design (she’s a veteran of houses like Prada and Louis Vuitton), her newborn line is still forming its voice. So far, it’s a promising blend of forthright femininity and functionality, many pieces created for curators of capsule wardrobes.
The fact that many of these pieces used up the very last bits of limited-run fabric creates the scarcity so coveted in couture. Anyone can shop fabric – but not everyone can have a garment made from that fabric, no longer available, which idled on that bolt in that storage closet. It’s so mundane, in a way, so obvious that of course you’d take inventory and use what you already have – anyone who’s taught crafts would know that – that the fact that using remnants is novel only highlights how disconnected from sparse reality we’ve become.
It’ll be interesting to track this house as it develops. I’m hoping to see a more unified voice and creative use of eco-friendly techniques.
Maison Margiela: chaotic upcycling
John Galliano over at Maison Margiela not only embraced the use of remnants, but actually went thrifting for materials. His collection was based on idea that, according to Galliano, “there are too many clothes in the world.” Everything that could be made is already out there: now’s the time to dive into the world’s stock of clothing with a scalpel, pull apart the seams of old workwear, cobble the pieces back together, and not bat an eye at exposed stitching or mismatched buttons. It’s all a part of the process, of accepting the concept of scarcity.
He built upon the netting of past collections, but this time not quite punching through the fabric, much like what happens when you use a dull hole-puncher. The result was a punky sort of sequin effect, raw but ordered, spontaneous but somehow logical, much in keeping with the chaotic elegance of the house. Punchy, riotous, and quite literally scrappy.
Per usual, Galliano did away with any clear gender delineations, further punctuating the underlying theme here: we’re going back to the roots of fashion, to the enterprising people who simply made do with the materials and tools at their fingertips, and to the radically primordial concept that every body, independent of gender, needs to be clothed.
Ronald van der Kemp: the OG upcycler
This is nothing new, and it is exactly for this reason that I’d be remiss to not mention van der Kemp when talking about eco-friendly fashion. He has used deadstock to create his collections since the birth of his brand in 2015, often with techniques novel to the world of western fashion. Vogue cites the process used to create a faux-faux-fur jacket (the double “faux” will make sense in a second): “hand-made by Carpet For Life, a small organization that works to empower Moroccan women in small villages in the Sahara, generating an income to preserve their heritage and support their communities to get a better life by using their ancient Boucherite weaving technique to make carpets from leftover clothes or fabrics.”
The resultant coat from said technique was a black and gold creation meant to critique the plastic-reliant faux-fur coats of present popularity. And while to me, it looks nothing like fur, the texture and execution are nonetheless appealing.
Van der Kemp, in my eyes, set the bar for ecologically-friendly and ethical couture – it is only now that other designers are starting to see it. I hope these eco-newcomers use this next-generation environmentalism as fodder for competition, rather than running with it for a season and dropping it should their customers grow bored. I’m cautiously optimistic, however, that with the rise of eco-activism (along with sea levels), the thrifty mindset will be an expectation of couturiers, rather than a bonus.
love,
Stig.
*All info via Vogue, The New York Times, and Business of Fashion
