Weekend

28.04.2018

Good
as new
Celebrating vintage on
Fashion Revolution Week

Photo: Miki Barlok

Feature |
Textile artist Aoife Banks believes fast fashion is a feminist issue.
Picture: Matthew Thompson
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12 IRISH EXAMINER Weekend
Talking
about a
revolution
W Fashion Revolution Week and the
HEN Richard
Malone opened
London
Fashion Week
in February, Vogue’s Sarah
Mower wasn’t the only
critic applauding the Irish
designer’s ongoing commit-
ment to sustainability.
“Was there ever a time
when sustainable fashion
was in its own special lane
for ecologically worthy but
slightly meh clothes?” she
wondered. Commending the
“cheerfully chic energy” of
Malone’s autumn winter
collection, she heralded a
change: “A new generation
that does its ethics by show-
ing exciting fashion.”
And it’s true that Malone,
27, is one of a growing
number of young designers
putting ethics and the en-
vironment at the heart of
what they do; treating sus-
tainability not as a novelty
or a selling point, but simply
— as he says himself — “a
given”.
For Malone, it’s been a
founding principle of his ap-
proach since he was a stu-
dent at Central St Martins.
Now, eschewing the values
and techniques of mass pro-
duction, he works with hand
woven fabrics produced by a
small collective of female ar-
tisans in India, using envi-
ronmentally safe dyes to
produce his vibrant prints,
and combining them with
recycled fabrics and inno-
vations like machine wash-
able evening gowns, for high
fashion that’s low-impact.
“It’s something I can be
excited by, and customers
and stores can be excited by,
because I’m looking at new
ways of making things, and
the conversation about sus-
tainability is really import-
ant to the design,” he says.
As his business grows, it’s
something he’s not prepared
to compromise on.
“Once I compromise I’ve
lost the battle,” he says. “I
don’t think you can make
anything contemporary
without considering sus-
tainability. Sometimes I feel
like a bit of a narcissist for
doing this. Realistically, the
world doesn’t need any
| 28.04.2018
millennials behind it want to break
the spell of fast fashion.
Carolyn Moore meets the new
generation of Irish designers
prioritising sustainable style
more clothes, but if that’s
what you’re going to do, you
have to at least consider sus-
tainability, otherwise
you’re just pumping more
‘stuff’ into the world that’s
not really needed.”
Call it millennial mindful-
ness, or simply a gener-
ational response to being
raised in a throwaway cul-
ture that wasn’t of their
making, but Malone’s ap-
proach exemplifies a new at-
titude to sustainability; one
that seeks to make fashion
low-impact by design.
Fashion designer Jen-
nifer Byrne, 26, agrees that
segregating ‘sustainable
fashion’ distorts the conver-
sation. “It needs to be incor-
porated into our approach
to fashion across the
board,” she says. “Rather
than having two separate
streams, it just needs to be
the new way — that’s the
only option.”
Raised with an awareness
of environmental issues, as
a fashion undergrad in Lim-
erick School of Art and De-
sign, Byrne studied sustain-
ability for her dissertation.
Now she’s completing a
masters in fashion ethics in
Scotland, and along with
continuing her ethical
fashion line, she hopes to
work as a sustainability
consultant — a job Business
of Fashion recently declared
one of six “Fashion Careers
of the Future”.
In August, Byrne will be
among the first class to
graduate from the fashion
ethics course, a broad area
of study encompassing
everything from the threat
of modern slavery to the en-
vironmental impact of
microfibers. All aged be-
tween 25 and 28, with back-
grounds in fashion, her
classmates share a common
interest in understanding
and negating the impact of
the fashion industry on
people and the planet.
“Fashion is a medium for
people to express them-
selves and show their cre-
ativity and their personal-
ity,” Byrne says, “but that
shouldn’t have to come with
a huge environmental or so-
cial impact.” If fashion is re-
volting, millennials are
leading the charge, and
many brands now employ
experts to advise on improv-
ing their ethical credentials.
Now the largest and most
powerful consumer group,
millennials represent over
$200 billion (€164bn) in buy-
ing power in the US alone;
and with recent studies
from Nielsen and Deloitte
showing millennials are
most likely to pay more for
sustainable products,
they’re driving the push for
industry-wide change.
It’s a push that’s also
being fueled by activism,
much of it propagated on-
line, and this week, Fashion
Revolution Week — an an-
nual campaign marking the
anniversary of the Rana
Plaza factory collapse which
killed more than 1,000 gar-
ment workers in Bangla-
desh five years ago — has
been encouraging con-
sumers to take to social
media and ask, “Who Made
My Clothes?” Byrne says
the campaign helps raise
awareness amongst people
“not immersed in the
fashion industry”, but adds:
“We need to reach a point
where we don’t have to ask
the question, because we

know brands have taken
Low-impact, timeless de- sustainability and ethics
sign — Alanagh Clegg’s into consideration.”
Textile artist and activist
Four Threads collection is Aoife Banks agrees. A final
made to last. year student in NCAD, she
believes, “At end of the day,
it shouldn’t be down to the
consumer to make sure
someone, somewhere isn’t
suffering for their fashion
choices.”
Banks was midway
through a fashion degree
when, realising how compli-
cit fast fashion was in the ex-
ploitation of women, she de-
cided it was an industry she
wanted no part of. Switch-
ing her area of study to fine
art textiles, she has taken “a
more radical route”, ad-
dressing the high cost of
cheap fashion through
sculptural rather than
wearable textiles.
Last year, Banks visited
the Rana Plaza site, and met
with Bangladeshi garment
workers and labour welfare
organisations. “It was quite
harrowing, as a sheltered
western woman, to step into
that world. As consumers in
the west, we’re not exposed
to that side of fashion,” she
says, and as an activist,
she’s working with Fashion
Revolution Week to educate
and inform consumers;
keeping the welfare of gar-
ment workers to the fore
long after the news cycle has
moved on from a tragedy
like Rana Plaza. “The move-
ment is growing,” she says.
“And these concerns are
more prevalent in the
younger generation — we’re
becoming more conscious of
the impact of our consumer
habits.”
Textiles graduate-turned-
fashion designer Alanagh
Clegg, 24, agrees Fashion
Revolution Week “helps am-
plify the message and put
pressure on big companies
take this seriously as an
issue.” When she started
her ethical brand, Four
Threads, “The ideals repre-
sented by Four Threads
were: inspired, handmade,
Richard Malone is committed
to sustainabilty in fashion.
| Feature
quality, and conscious,” she
says. “Conscious means
being fully transparent, so if
someone asks, ‘Who made
my clothes?’, I can say, ‘This
man, I’ll show you his
photo’.” As a teenager im-
mersed in the culture of fast
fashion, Clegg admits sus-
tainability and ethics were
never on her agenda. “It
wasn’t until I went to college
that I began to question why
we buy so much,” she says.
Summer internships with
a sustainable textile special-
ist in London first intro-
duced her to both the con-
cepts of sustainability and
the Indian producers she
now works with. During her
final year in college, Clegg
travelled to India to re-
search ethical production,
and what she experienced
changed the course of her
career. “It was never about
fashion for me,” she says.
“But I met artisan pro-
ducers making things with
craftsmanship, love, and re-
spect for tradition and the
environment, and it meant
so much to them. From saris
handed down from mother
to daughter to stitches and
techniques passed down
through generations, there
was so much more to what
they wore than just fashion
or trends.” Studying tailor-
ing by night, for her final
year project, Clegg designed
an embroidered coat LSAD fashion grad Jennifer Byrne is on her way to becoming a sus-
through which she would tainability expert.
trace the production process
of a garment. When Empori-
um Kalu in Naas bought six
coats, the concept for Four
Threads was born.
In addition to using hand
woven fabrics, low-impact
workshops, having a com-
pletely transparent supply
chain, and embracing com-
plex traditional production
techniques that are labour
intensive but provide em-
ployment for hundreds of
women, Alanagh’s trans-
seasonal approach is about
buying less and keeping
things longer. If and when
she introduces new styles, it
won’t be to answer to sea-
sonal demand, but rather
“to answer a question as to
BLACKPOOL
what I can wear when it’s
really hot”.
The Commons Inn,
“I know it’s not how New Mallow Road
everyone else does it,” she
says. “And it’s hard when Every Tuesday
someone says ‘we need
something new, now’, and I 5.30pm & 7.30pm
have to just say, ‘that’s not Every Wednesday
what I do’.” But with the
planet groaning under the 7.30am & 9.30am
weight of discarded fast Call Sarah: 087-9591866
fashion, millions falling vic-
tim to modern slavery, and
our seas awash with micro-
plastic, much of it coming
from textiles, it’s clear
GLANMIRE
there’s something radically
wrong with the way ‘every-
Glanmire GAA Club,
one else does it’. Sallybrook
With young designers
committed to making (Near The Brook Inn)
changes, one small step at a Every Saturday
time, perhaps there’s hope
for the future of fashion. “I 7.30am, 9.30am & 11.30am
can do things right and Call Lorraine: 085-1931790
know I’m doing a good job,
but we need to see the bigger
picture,” says Clegg. “We
need to hold the big brands
to account. The demand for
change is there.”
IRISH EXAMINER Weekend | 28.04.2018 13