That the fashion industry has a huge effect on the climate is undeniable. As the second largest polluter in the world, we can’t talk about fashion anymore without talking about sustainability. We can all make a difference by starting to expand our knowledge about what ethical and sustainable design means and appreciate the labor and craft that goes into our wardrobes. We selected 12 up and coming sustainable designers that inspire us to invest in a durable wardrobe and future while keeping our sartorial edge.
GARCIABELLO
Garciabello is a sustainable brand inspired by everyday life and founded in Argentina in 2017 by Juliana Garcia Bello. Her view ‘Tracing the paths we’ve taken, the concepts in each collection speak of what’s ours. Whether that is our home, land or other shelters’. The brand uses donated hand-me-downs and old or discarded clothes.
These resources are transformed into genderless garments for everyday wear by using up-cycling, reconstruction and zero waste patterns.
REMORDUR
Monique Charlie Petrovsky, clothing designer and founder of Remordur hails from Los Angeles. She makes outfits that help the remordians who come to earth feel a bit more at home. Luckily they do this in a sustainable way using discarded items to create OTHERWORLDLY and still earth-appropriate wear.
VAEG STUDIO
Vaeg is an independent studio based in East London that launched during the lockdown of 2020 after founder Urvashi Srivastava found herself furloughed from her full-time job. She uses discarded materials to create one-of-a-kind sustainable pieces. Her goal is to change our look on second hand clothing, helping shift the demand away from fast fashion.
NATHALIAJMAG
The sustainable streetwear brand is founded by NathaliaJMag, a Colombian-American contemporary fashion designer. She participated in the 15th season of Project Runway. She draws inspiration form her Columbian and American heritage to create comfortable and fun designs with deadstock fabric and natural dyes.
WEI-YU HUNG
WEI-YU HUNG is a womenswear label based in the Netherlands. Key messages: Tradition is avant-garde and local is global. Wei-yu transfers the culture of traditional handcrafts into the design. With his brand Wei-yu explores heritage and cultures, creating sustainable fashion from established wisdom and craft.
STUDIO PMS
Studio PMS is a Utrecht based fashion collective run by Suzanne Mulder, Merle Kroezen & Puck Martens. They have embraced interdisciplinarity as a design method. For example utilizing 3D modeling, virtual reality, animations and augmented reality to create a new innovative perspective on fashion.
ANYA SIMS
Anya Sims is a fashion graduate from Norwich University of the Arts. She makes handmade to order garments from Sheffield, England. She has a strong love of colour, texture and absurdity. Sustainability is at the heart of her designs, reusing oddments, offcuts and second hand wedding decor to reinvent our perception of sustainable fashion aesthetic.
LE NGOC HA THU
Le Ngoc Ha Thu is a Vietnamese fashion designer who won the Redress 2020 Menswear competition and pursues a career in sustainable fashion as a way to combine her love for art & design and her care for the environment. She uses her creations as medium for her complex ideas such as political commentary or social & environmental issues.
HANNAH LAUREN RILEY
Hannah is an emerging textile-focused fashion designer from Sydney. She’s fascinated by clothing’s ability to tell stories and aims to bring them to life. She creates ethical & sustainable design by exploring dyeing, printing and embellishing techniques. By using colors, shapes and prints she inspires the wearer and invokes emotions.
Bridget Cure Model: Dubs Yunupingu EL/IF.
Elif
Elif started up-cycling clothes for herself. But immediately received messages from people who wanted to wear her designs. Each piece that she designs is unique, constructed from forgotten and neglected clothes by cleaning, deconstructing and reconstructing them in a new form and style.
RAFAEL KOUTO
Rafael Kouto is an avant-garde, experimental and conceptual fashion brand established in 2017. The brand centers around integrity and purpose. Kouto wants to reimagine pre- and postconsumer clothes to create designs that are characterized by a distinctive, visionary aesthetic merging the African and Western culture.
BYLOUMOFFAT
ByLouMoffat is a sustainable UK fashion and textile brand which Lou set up in July 2020. Based in Birmingham, the brand focuses around Lou’s hand drawn print designs which take inspiration from the psychedelic eras of the 60s and 70s, combining vintage motifs with contemporary colour ways. Lou hopes to bring a splash of colour into people’s lives allowing them to be sustainable now and groovy forever!
