'Design things that are not finished, things that can keep on being repaired and altered; things in motion'
- Cameron Tonkinwise in Shaping Sustainable Fashion by Alison Gwilt & Timo Rissanen.
'Revalue' revolves around becoming an Agent of Change, examining the issues of consumerism and environmental concerns within the fashion industry. It seeks to offer an alternative method of fashion production and consumption, reacting to our 'throw-away' society, which results in a huge over-abundance of rejected used textiles.
Gwilt and Rissanen propose in Shaping Sustainable Fashion that charity stores only keep 25 percent of clothing donated; meaning 75 percent is either sold to rag traders or textile merchants, or sent to landfill to decompose. This capsule collection is upcycled from second-hand furnishings and fabric remnants - sourced from second-hand stores - to challenge perceptions of over-consumption and value within discarded textiles and clothing. The true worth of otherwise waste-materials is realised, through which one-off garments are produced.
The expected ideals of beauty and perfection within clothing are questioned via elements of a symbolic 'decay' of techniques, celebrating beauty within imperfection. A selection of hand-intensive techniques have been used, such as smocking, embroidery, fraying and heat-set pleating, in order to re-value rejected objects through very human and time-intensive processes.
The birth of 'Revalue' comes from the theory of embracing disruption and disturbance as a fundamental design principle. This encourages an elevated acceptance of the damaged, imperfect or repaired as being beautiful and desirable. It is through the hand-techniques of smocking, embroidery and fraying that these garments have the ability to be altered by their users, without the beauty of their aesthetic being lost. Fletcher and Tham state that "experience with mending first hand rewires our consumer brain" - it allows us to build a deeper connection to our clothing and consumer actions.
Photography - Liam Jemmeson
Model - Stephanie Wake