Growing consumer concern over the environmental impact of fashion has set in motion a world-wide sustainable mindset. From small businesses to established brands, sustainability is becoming less of an afterthought and is driving brands to new solutions and initiatives.
John Lewis has launched an initiative for customers to recycle or donate their unwanted garments to charity and will get up to £3 per item with a maximum of £9 a donation. Although a small step, it is most certainly a step in the right direction.
By the same token, Selfridges has launched ‘Project Earth’ which includes a clothing rental service, a beauty product refills as well as the introduction of ‘ReSelfridges’ allowing customers to sell their own items for store credit. It appears that mainstream brands are listening to the consumer and are slowly becoming more sustainably minded.
In April, Christopher Ræburn’s namesake brand made a commitment to prioritise actions over words, make less but better and use radical transparency to empower the next generation. Having been compared to the likes of Stone Island and CP Company and creatively to Paul Smith and Massimo Osti, Ræburn’s creations of functional menswear and womenswear is almost revolutionary. Every product on offer, fulfils at least one sustainability criteria; ‘ræmade,’ ‘ræcycled,’ ‘ræduced.’ Sustainability is anything but new to Raeburn having designed garments from discarded fabrics including silk maps and military parachutes since 2009. Recent successes include being one of six brands to design a face mask for the British Fashion Council’s Charity face mask initiative and collaborating with Depop offering bucket hat patterns with deadstock fabric available and affordable to the public, the same deadstock fabric which will be crafted into his SS21 collection.
Over lockdown the initiative to support small was huge; for Asata Maisé this is anything but new; having been over 10 years since her first local fashion show at the age of 16, she has chosen to use one of a kind fabrics purchased from small businesses on Etsy to exclude waste form her practise. This decision was driven by the waste, pollution and abusive labour practises of fast fashion. As of late, Maisé’s brand has grown massively from 1000 followers on Instagram to 14,000 with thanks to her feature on Vogue’s list of black-owned fashion brands to support and Halsey’s Black Creators Fund Initiative allowing her to invest in her own studio and hire a member to her one-woman team.
Seemingly, small sustainably-focused names like Maisé and Ræburn are paving the way for sustainable practise in the fashion industry, influencing big names like John Lewis and Selfridges to follow suit.
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