Poodles and Pentagrams
I was chatting this morning about agendas and why people who work in fashion could promote integrity over unethical practice. Why not?
That’s exactly what Vin and Omi said last night after their show at St Pancreas Station to kick off London Fashion Week. Vin and Omi - one of the most exciting design duos in sustainable fashion - created their largest eco-show to date showcasing many of their different eco textiles and social impact projects.
This is a duo who have added some much needed punked-up rock and roll to the sustainable agenda. Icons such as Debbie Harry have appeared in their shows and we have them to thank for the perfect T-shirt slogan: Stop Fucking the Planet. Everything these guys do is carefully thought through from selling fewer garments to buyers so that there is no sale-rail, to requesting the return of worn out or finished with garments so they can recycle their own work.
In an environment where fashion one of the biggest polluters has to change its process - here is a team leading the way for others to follow. Their bags for instance, are the result of a collaboration with the London College of Fashion: The BIN 2 BODY project started at London Fashion Week Men’s where they collected the waste plastic bottles from the event and processed them into durable rPET textiles. CAN 2 CATWALK involved working with homeless charities in Birmingham to collect cans from rubbish strewn areas of parks and roadsides in return for cash, enabling Vin and Omi to develop a new metal fabric.
Even the organic latex is from their plantation in Malaysia where they engage with workers and their families and ensure the plantation has minimum negative impact on the environment and a positive effect on the villagers.
I loved the pentagrams used across time as an emblem of a variety of religions, Vin and Omi both feel it has a strong grounding in earth magic and say, “we are using the pentagram to depict eco thought and the new wave of, in effect, eco religion. A religion that is growing out of the need to save the planet.”
You can’t argue with that, everything on the runway last night, was there for a reason...YES even the poodle prints (gotta get me some of that). The team want to return to basics to with the cute pup patterns... to remind us of the simple joys of dressing up. Fashion after all is about fun and frivolity too.