Cheap, chic and totally unique clothing are just stitches away with the rise of this season’s new fashion craze – recycling. Pull out last season’s clothes and get ready for some gorgeous new outfits emerging from recycling, re-using and re-loving your fabrics!
With each year 1.2million tonnes of clothing being thrown into landfill in the UK alone, it’s no surprise that we are turning to revamped wardrobes, recycling and clothes swaps to save our planet and fashion style. The shocking statistic from direct.gov has encouraged a massive trend in re-vamping clothes with the simplest stitch turning drab clothes into new and exciting garments ready for any high-street fashion-goer.
Chic and affordable clothing ranges are becoming more and more popular, encouraged by our climate concerns and demands of original clothing pieces. Sarah Walpole is an artist and clothes designer based in Brighton. ‘I’ve always dressed a little bit different so have added features to my clothes and enjoyed recycling and adjusting things’.
Specialising in recycled fabrics and adaptations of hand-me-downs, Sarah has had a successful line of handmade designs on sale in a local charity shop for almost three years. Adjusting clothes is defiantly the way to make an outfit original, even if it’s with the simplest stitch, colourful zip, or iron on logo. Keeping up to date with the cat-walks has therefore never been easier, and responding to fashion needs is an area that Sarah loves…
‘You are able to respond to local trends and clientele. For instance when the students come in around September time, I know they will be shopping for individual edgy items with their student loan! In the summertime I find tourists tend to prefer English cuteness like embroidered little woollens and waistcoats!’ ‘I love making jackets -particularly the menswear which seems to sell the most. I think it is because there aren’t that many places where guys can buy really individual and different stuff. Suit jackets get donated in abundance so it is a great way of making use of them as there’s only so many plain suit jackets that you can put out on the shop floor!’ Sarah is defiantly right about it being individual and a means of expressing yourself visually. It doesn’t have to cost however… ‘I buy clothes from Oxfam, such as the guys suit jackets, but mostly my pieces are made from things found in car boot sales and those donated by all my friends and family. Whenever they have a sort out I get a big delivery of things to rummage through that I can use as pieces to work on, or alternatively, cut up and use the fabrics or logos that feature on them, everything has potential!’