The fall / winter 2021 catwalks featured many designs where fabrics were patched together to create garments in an eclectic interplay of colors, prints and patterns. This “collage style” worked well for all types of clothing, including dresses, coats, and one-pieces. Designers and brands such as Etro, Chloe, Marine Serre and Dolce & Gabbana embraced this aesthetic as the ultimate in bohemian chic.
Create high fashion with recycled clothing
The trend can be traced back to the early 1990s when grunge fashion was at its peak. In 1991 the young African designer Lamine Kouyaté founded a label that he Xuly.Bët called. Kouyaté came up with the visionary idea of using recycled clothing to create high fashion by redesigning found clothing items through cutting, sewing, and modifications that ranged from subtle remodeling to complete transformations. He turned dresses into skirts, skirts into bags, stockings into scarves. The best known are the sweaters, which he sewed together to make clothes. He often left threads hanging at the end of the seams, the red color of which underlined the process of transforming a discarded garment into a designer piece. A style that Kouyaté maintains to this day.
Away from the catwalks, too, more and more fashion designers are looking for ways to become sustainable, and piecing together recycled garments is a great way to achieve that goal while staying on trend. In the fall of 2021, the collage-style fashion can be found in many stores.
The New York-based label Rentrayage was recently founded and is fully focused on sustainable practices and circulatory systems. The website says: “Every piece of clothing, whether old, used, vintage or new, has a value, a beauty and a purpose. Everything we make is made from existing materials or can be reborn. All the materials we use can be returned to the earth and reabsorbed into our ecological systems. “
It is similar with the British company Ragyard. She is looking for unique items that can be reinterpreted and recycled. Instead of making clothes from scratch, they reduce waste and give used pieces a new life. A typical trademark of Ragyard is the application of large embroidered peacock applications to the sleeves of old camouflage jackets and sweatshirts. Dresses and skirts are made from recycled denim shirts, remodeled T-shirts and other materials. Old Levi’s jeans are adorned with sportswear patches, and training pants that have already been worn are studded with diamonds.
LVMH award finalist Conner Ives caught the attention of the fashion world even before graduating from Central Saint Martins College, London. He developed his own version of the collage style using stock or vintage items, including many T-shirts.
Based on the collections shown for pre-fall 2022, it can be concluded that the collage style will be seen on the catwalks for at least one more season.
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.uk. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ.