Fashion Reimagined.
The Creative Director of luxury fashion label Mother of Pearl, Amy Powney, received £100,000 from the British Fashion Council/Vogue’s Designer Fashion Fund in 2017. She decided to go on a journey of rediscovery, to understand what her place was in the fashion realm, and how she could utilise her privilege and responsibility to make shifts in the industry.
A resulting film — Fashion Reimagined — directed by Becky Hutner, was launched in March 2023. I went along to a showing at Picturehouse Finsbury Park and made 4.5 notebook pages worth of notes. Here are my reflections on the film, along with some similarities I noticed in my own journey, and insights into how the fashion industry works.
Images: 1. Fashion Reimagined promo shot; 2. Fashion Reimagined opening title sequence.
Beginnings.
The film starts in 2017 with Amy Powney, Creative Director of Mother of Pearl winning the Designer Fashion Fund. After reading Naomi Klein’s book No Logo at Kingston University, where she studied knitwear design, Amy realised she couldn’t continue to design and create in the same way that the industry wanted. Her resulting ethically sourced knitwear collection she says seemed to confuse university tutors who didn’t know why you would be thinking such things.
During my own fashion degree, we were taught to consider our “labour of love”, but there weren’t really lessons on sustainability, and it was something I had to seek out myself, finding a juxtaposition in sourcing fabrics from Goldhawk Road to interrogating Yorkshire mills to understand exactly what they had.
“Being a fashion designer is a privilege - it’s a huge responsibility.”
At the time, Amy says that only People Tree and Katherine Hamnett were the sustainable ethical brands. It actually wasn’t the case, as a lot of independent designers were trying to pave a way in a complex minimum-order-quantity world, but those were the two that were sort of in the mainstream - Katherine moreso due to the shouty logo t-shirts. I have my own Save The Future t-shirt, now paint-splattered and made into a vest, but remembered selling those tees when I volunteered in the Ethical Justice Foundation shop in Soho during my placement year. I’d also tried to get a placement at People Tree, but found a little beauty in the form of Outsider where I worked for 6 weeks helping designer Noorin Khamisani with sourcing locally (very difficult) and cutting patterns.
After working the cutting room floor and making her way up to Creative Director, Amy wonders whether fashion is where she ought to be, reflecting back on time in school as fashion being a social status, to avoid bullying, and working jobs just to be able to spend it all on clothes. I similarly recall shopping as a young teen being a way to figure out who I was, with my Grandma happily giving me more pocket money to vicariously enjoy the adventure because I was able to seek out bargains. I did a lot of upcycling though too, and for me it was an exploration of the materials; friends were heartily embarassed when I purchased a pair of hot pink Criminal Damage cargo pants that had random tapes hanging off, but I loved them, and to this day I regret getting rid of them however that happened.
I just liked making and exploring, particularly the sensations of different textiles and playing with colour. Amy’s dad (who is noted as an environmental activist) in a film scene remarked that by working in the industry as a designer you’re able to make change that perhaps you otherwise couldn’t. My personal journey led me away from making, even though it feels in-built in me to do so, because I couldn’t warrant creating more stuff in a world full of it, chosing instead to take my position as someone who holds and disseminates information as the way to shift mindsets.
Images: 1. My notebook of notes taken during the film screening at a cinema; 2.. Amy with her dad on the land she grew up on (screenshot from the film); 3. A previous look from a Mother of Pearl collection (screenshot from the film).
Getting started.
The film had already been informative in terms of sharing tidbits about the industry, such as the influence of fast-paced seasonality - that aren’t really seasons - on overproduction. You’re taken through a narrative of how Amy as head of Mother of Pearl (MOP) was creating 750 designs a year {though it’s unclear if these were sampled and put into production, or simply sketches}. Additionally, the film shows designers stepping down as Creative Directors of well-known luxury fashion houses, including Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton in 2014 and Raf Simons for Christian Dior in 2015. This leads you to the point where Amy decides to shift the business model of MOP - founded by Maia Norman in 2002 - from one producing four collections a year, to one producting two.
Choosing to use the finance of the Designer Fashion Fund on creating a fully sustainable fashion line, Amy sets out to develop “No Frills”, giving herself a year to research and develop something that very little people have previously done.
No Frills takes its name from a value supermarket line that was about creating the same foods and quality of ingredients as their more famous competitors, just without any added extras of exotic packaging design or aggressive marketing and advertising.
The blueprint of the collection was to be: traceable, organic, using minimal water and chemicals, socially responsible, have a low carbon footprint and give respect to animals.
No frills.
It’s this part of the film that could really benefit other designers and brands wanting to set out on a similar research journey. Even if they aren’t particularly invested in going all in - especially as they may not have the funds - it’s an eye opener to the avenues you could take were you looking to improve your supply chain and materials.
A segment looks at the journey of a cotton shirt, with how many countries it will pass through from fibre to finished product. It actually misses out ginning, going from farm to spinning, which is a big chunk of processing and blackholes for traceability, though perhaps it was simply an editing decision. In reality the ginning (where the cotton seed is separated from the boll, essentially a cleaning step) is likely to be in the same country as the farm though it is an integral processing step not to include.
By recognising that a cotton shirt has probably passed through 7-9 countries before it ends up with the customer (including the packaging and distribution), Amy decides that as local production as possible is best - this reduces carbon footprint as well as being more traceable (in theory). Cotton was also used as a case study material because they wanted the garments to be able to either biodegrade or be recycled - so ruling out synthetics (because while they can be recycled, they won’t biodegrade effectively) This was and still is a significant value in my own designs, stemming from research into design-for-disassembly practices during my MA. Wool was chosen alongside cotton, and though two materials seems limiting from the outside - if you’re used to a plethora of fibre and fabric choices - because of the variety of fabrics you can create with these two fibres, it’s still complex.
Wool.
UK industry.
At the time, the MOP knitwear was produced in a Hong Kong factory, but the team had discovered that mills didn’t know where the raw material came from. With an awareness of the practice of mulesing (where the sheep’s tail is cut off to make it easier to spot any flies that hatch eggs inside the sheep) - which was actually shown on screen to my surprise (and delight) - they had wanted to ensure not to use farms that allowed this. They also discussed the fashion-unfriendly properties of most British wool, which doesn’t tend to have as fine micron as international merino breeds - to my dismay, because I know farms do have lovely garment wools, but perhaps not in 2017. Lesley Prior who has a flock of Bowmont merino sheep in Devon was mentioned, but she is utterly booked up (for Finisterre, presumably, who were early pioneers and once had a sheep in one of their stores to showcase the fibre).
Première Vision.
Recognising that there was no ability to scale UK wool, they decided to visit Première Vision — a biannual trade show in Paris — to check out the sustainable fibre and fabric section there. It’s interesting thinking back to how the industry was five years ago; it feels like it was more progressive than it was portrayed in this film, especially if we consider how essentially three years of innovation and development didn’t exist due to the pandemic. So, perhaps it’s just that six years ago, I’d already been on this journey of discovery for something like 13 years already - if I take into account my curiosity during an Art BTEC. I often have to remind myself that I know this stuff, but some people are yet to figure it out, and for me that was probably the most insightful takeaway from this film.
So at Première Vision (PV), Amy [and the team member I didn’t actually write the name down of, the product manager? sourcing manager?] visited stands where reps would say that something was sustainable but in a very vague way. I actually do recall struggling on my own visits to PV, questioning reps who didn’t know what I was asking — it is different these days, and slightly easier to have conviction in what you’re asking, as really, they should know. They came across an Austrian family-run mill Seidra, who became the starting point for envisioning what a traceable collection could be.
Seidra [Austria].
Seidra are what I would class as regenerative; they use timber from their land to power the mill, and use the steam from the burning to soften the wool fabrics - though you wouldn’t know this unless you visited as, typically for mills, their website is limited in information. Crucially, asking questions at trade shows, though exhausting, is a way for the reps to know what customers are actually looking for - if you don’t ask, they won’t find out.
Lanas Trinidad [uruguay].
Local wool was not available in raw form to be spun in Europe and then woven into fabric. It’s different now of course, and there are mills who are even vertically integrated (they do everything), such as Lebenskleidung in Germany/Austria (who in fact do produce a regional wool). However, Seidra had mentioned that they import yarn spun from wool fibre sourced at Lanas Trinidad in Uruguay, leading the team to go investigate further. Incidentally, Lanas Trinidad do have a lovely website with videos of the sheep and land, though this is captured beautifully in the film. After Amy’s visit there she remarks that everything clicked into place, being there on the land with the animals roaming, as if she had been pretending she didn’t come from a rural background.
In terms of what Lanas Trinidad do that is revolutionary for sustainable production, apart from what appears to be a mob grazing set-up (moving sheep from one pasture to the next like nomadic herders do), they have 22 wastewater lagoons. Wool scouring is a super dirty process; you’re removing the dirt and lanolin (sheep oils) from the fleece before it is combed and prepped as rovings. Though this wastewater is technically natural (as there are no chemical inputs) scouring requires soaps and a lot of water, and combined with grease that could block sunlight from entering water systems, it all needs to be treated before it can be safely released and re-used - that is, if you want to be kind about things.
Lanas Trinidad’s lagoons go in stages, with the majority of them covered with a tarp that captures methane being off-gassed from the enzymes breaking down out of the soap and grease. The methane is used as fuel for the mill. The last lagoon is clean freshwater that have ducks swimming in it, and is used to irrigate trees that are also used as timber to burn for the fibre softening. The finishing processes of all fibres and fabrics is one of the most energy, water and chemical intensive aspects of textile production, so reducing impact is essential, and using steam over detergents is not only better for the fibre and for us, but for waste streams too.
Images: 1. Lanas Trinidad’s sheep flock. 2. Whiteness of the wool fleece; 3. Byproduct of lanolin sold to the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries; 4. Clean freshwater lagoon. [Credit: Lanas Trinidad]
This part of the film shows processed wool from the farm (as rovings) being baled up with their name and exported. As there is no spinning in Uruguay, Amy has to try neighbouring countries, and so heads to Peru.
Inca Tops [PERU].
As they want to create a regional product to limit the carbon footprint, understanding if there is the majority of the supply chain in one area is important. In order to find a spinner, they first go to a knitwear factory — Venator — who source their yarn from Inca Tops. The discussion at this point was around the length of time it takes to produce a sample i.e. 4-5 weeks, which isn’t what MOP (or any of fashion) are comfortable with. The mills were also uncertain about the traceability element, but were willing to give it a go. Again this comes back to the confidence and conviction in asking questions, and attempting to build relationships - most definitely more accessible when you have £100,000 of research money.
Sampling.
Though the film had cut back to discussing cotton already, for continuity I’m explaining the rest of the challenges with the wool supply chain before introducing the cotton supply chain.
The main issue with the Peruvian supply chain was the length of time to make samples, which as above, was 4-5 weeks per sample, and so it took them 3 months to receive just 3 samples. This is way too slow for fashion, even if you’re producing only two collections a year. One potential reason for this lead time that the film highlighted was how small brands may get pushed out of production where a larger order comes in, so on top of a slower production line, there is also a wait while the larger brand gets their stuff made first.
Another issue was found in purchasing the raw material. To buy a container outright of Lanas Trinidad’s wool, MOP would need to produce 26,000 units of clothing. However, as a mill, Seidra in Austria could purchase the minimum order quantity, though it relied on a tight relationship to have trust each way to ensure both parties “won”. With the wool bought and spun, Seidra started weaving a unique cotton-wool jacquard fabric — the cotton came from ISKO in Turkey it seems (see below on the cotton part).
Before establishing the supply chain to have a final fabric, no designs really can be produced. Your establishing problems and solutions, and then deciding what is possible to make — rather than designing and fitting the chain to suit your purpose. This is what the usual fashion supply chain looks like, and is why one single garment could be produced in multiple countries.
Cotton.
Denim production.
Denim is an ubiquitous fabric produced from cotton, and as the majority of people have denim in their wardrobes, and it’s a versatile fabric that many designs could be produced from, the MOP team chose to focus on denim mills for their cotton production. The film continues to provide beautifully shot images of production, such as indigo-dyed water churning away or the loom being warped, showcasing the intensity with which denim is produced. More statistics come across the screen to educate the viewer on the issues that are still not widely known, for instance as mentioned with the finishing stages, which for denim is heavy in the whiskering, stonewashing and distressing stages.
At the start of the film there was a strange moment where Turkish cotton fibre was rebuffed due to its apparent funding of ISIS, so said the news. I can’t remember this being a thing in 2017, but it caused the MOP team to take pause and consider other countries. Turkey was initially suggested because it is one of the largest cotton producers in Europe, and they had wanted to reduce carbon footprint. Other major cotton producing regions are the United States, Africa, India and China - though there are other European countries producing cotton, including Greece, Spain and Bulgaria. The team’s thought process is played out in the film, with remarks about risks involved in cotton production from pesticides - however, there was no mention of Genetically Modified crops, or child labour (again, could be editing).
Images: 1. A cotton field, location uncertain (screenshot from the film trailer); 2. MOP visiting the Inca Tops mill in Peru.
ISKO [Turkey].
The team came across ISKO, a Turkish cotton denim mill who are vertically integrated — so they manage the farms, they spin the yarn, they weave the cloth, they do all the finishing. There was actually a load of insight here about how ISKO produce with less water, chemicals and energy than the traditional denim mill — the water footprint [of a pair of jeans?] in 2010 was 50 litres, but is 8 litres in 2020. Along with how they do ozone bleaching and use lasers in order to achieve the same finishes as conventional harsh chemical and labour intensive methods. But I didn’t write much of this down purely because I know of ISKO through previous employment at London jeans brand Blackhorse Lane Ateliers. For the viewer though, whether working in fashion or not, I reckon it would be informative.
What they had made clear in the film is that they were disappointed in not being able to visit the cotton farms themselves. It is strange and worrying that this wasn’t allowed, especially as they were a pair of designers from a small brand, rather than someone auditing, so what was the concern in having them visit? For the MOP team, they were quite content in “having better practice in the interim than being 100% sustainable”, because the cotton farms and residual processes including the finishing at the factory are GOTS certified.
GOTS + SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY.
The Global Organic Textile Standard refers to a product, fabric or yarn that contains >70% organic material, and monitors the chemical inputs and, to a certain extent, the labour involved in the supply chain. It doesn’t offer any traceability measures, but the MOP team commented that it helped them get closer to vetting the chain when they couldn’t visit in person. Frankly, for me, it’s a red flag that they still couldn’t visit the farm.
They had also chosen to use a CMT [cut-make-trim] factory in Turkey, again to reduce that mileage. SARP produce denim products, and along with being a GOTS-certified factory, they are working to rehelibate and integrate ex-prisoners. This checked off another key element of this collection’s strategy: social responsibility.
It’s actually unclear how their supply chain for this capsule collection looked. The most important final fabric, as already mentioned, was a cotton-wool blend jacquard woven in Austria from the Uruguayan wool and Turkish cotton, presumably produced by SARP. We catch snippets of some of the pieces as the film takes you onwards to presenting the collection in Paris, but not full enough to recognise the composition and origin of the other pieces.
And what about the components used in the garments? There’s the signature pearls, which plastic or real have a significant environmental impact. I see buttons, so what are they made of? I guess the point is to show the decision-making and research involved, and that you can’t do everything. Perhaps I’m too cynical, but having produced my own collection where everything was the most sustainable (in my eyes), and worked for one brand in particular where it too was totally traced — Honest by. — then I do feel that there’s always more you can do (especially with funding and time).
Buying.
The samples were taken to Paris to be shown in a showroom for buyers to visit. If you’re reading this as someone not in the industry, then I do apologise if I haven’t explained all of the terms fully! When “samples” are referred to, it can be your pre-production samples that are often not even in the final fabric and colour, or it can be your post-production real samples that are then shown to buyers who place orders based on them. This film highlights the role of a buyer, and that relationship between the sales of the showroom and how buyers are constantly checking their margins; even if they like an item, they’re not going to hang around to its sustainability credentials if the price isn’t right. It was disheartening watching them turn and leave as Amy explained the garment’s journey and uniqueness of the materials.
A PR person for a buyer, after the buyer had left, said to Amy that they wouldn’t choose to purchase unless lots of other brands were also doing the same thing — seemingly it’s too much of a risk. And this was 2018, when in my eyes there were plenty of brands “doing sustainability”.
“When you design, it’s a bit of you.”
Images: 1-4. Pieces from the current Mother of Pearl core collection, showing the signaure "wallpaper “ jacquard jacket and trousers in black and green, and two pairs of jeans in black and stonewash blue.
Press.
Following on from the Paris fashion week showing, press and publicity came. An interview is shown with designer Katherine Hamnett in Hackney. Articles show that No Frills was the “only sustainable collection at London Fashion Week 2018”. King Charles [then Prince] makes a comment about how wonderful it is that there’s a new supply chain for wool. Amy goes on BBC to talk about the journey and importance of educating on the impact of overconsumption.
“If it wasn’t for Amy, other big brands wouldn’t be doing it.”
So this quote I’m a bit uncertain on. To me, plenty of brands in 2018 were in fact doing what they could, and there was more awareness and more materials and more publicity. I feel that this quote is from someone who wasn’t quite aware as others. This, along with a quote, “Amy is an expert in sustainable fashion”, is where I cringe in the film - and honestly why I was skeptical after viewing the trailer - that it’s saying Mother of Pearl was the only brand trying to change the system, and they now know everything, and it’s just not true.
From scenes with confused buyers in the Paris showroom then I can believe that there was ignorance from that side, but I know designers and small brands were making shifts. Even H&M and other fast fashion retailers were making changes in 2018, a lot even earlier than this — I was studying for my MA in 2011-2013 and there was plenty going on, including talks at Copenhagen Fashion Summit. However, there is evidence that luxury fashion is way behind the rest of the industry, and perhaps that’s what this film calls out.
Images: 1. Amy in the Paris showroom showing No Frills to buyers for the first time; 2. Amy with recent article reviewing the No Frills collection; 3. Katherine Hamnett in interview (all screenshots from the film trailer).
Onwards.
For Spring/Summer ‘20 fashion week in London, MOP held a one-off event where visitors could make a pledge out of nine options. It was interactive and engaged with a digital world where citizens wanted to share tales of activism. #FashionOurFuture raised awareness through tongue-in-cheek pledges on such challenges as repair, resale, buying better quality and considering your materials.
The end of the film provides the viewer with innovations that were coming to light as Amy’s journey was unravelling (and presumably as the film was being edited over the pandemic, from when we last saw the MOP team in February 2020, to its release now in March 2023). Such materials as mushroom leather and bio-colour (dyes produced by bacteria), and such technologies as QR product tracing. It finishes saying that over the 4 years since the journey began, the number of clothes described as “sustainable” had quadrupled. This term for sure is being used all over the place, whether it’s accurate or not, and so as a statistic feel it’s slightly misplaced - is it really showing how the positively the industry has shifted, or just that brands have jumped on the bandwagon?
Final thoughts.
While I enjoyed the film — and was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t cringe the whole way through, based off the quotes in the trailer — I unfortunately have to switch my cynical head back on to say, ok you’ve done this, but what is actually next. The MOP website uncovers the “transparency” by explaining elements like using non-mulesed wool and organic cotton, or that ‘traced from farm to final’ means they know who did what where, and more on their key strategy including keeping it local to reduce transportation. And they have an additional webpage that considers the repair and resale aspect of the new business model. Looking at the copy though I still see gaps in the chance to educate readers, for example with the section on viscose that mentions it comes from trees yet not the chemical-intensive nature of turning that wood pulp into fibre.
Because I have many many years of experience in the sustainable fashion industry, as in actually working for brands and researching this stuff, from materials to production to communications, I am aware that I’m privileged to hold knowledge that others are still getting to grips with. But I’m still simply flummoxed when I see a brand talking about transparency yet not fully disclosing all of the details - why aren’t the components listed on the website? It takes additional work to put this stuff into a spreadsheet and get it onto a website, but it is utterly possible — you know where your stuff comes from. You’ve also mentioned already that you’d rather have better practice in the interim than best practice at some point in the future, and better practice involves noticing gaps and just giving out the information you have, whether it seems flawed or not. The components are part of the garment, the cost, the livelihoods of folk creating this stuff, I mean, it’s even integral to the design.
So, a great film that showcases the journey a designer must go on if they are to truly connect with their supply chain, and a story that highlights the separation of the roles within fashion but that collaborations are possible if you take a chance. And for a general viewer interested in what a fashion brand gets up to or wanting to learn about issues surrounding ethics and sustainability (moreso the latter), then this is a wonderfully heartfelt snapshot (the familial scenes are cute).
But if you’re a designer or a brand reading this, please can you tell us what your components are and where they came from. Sustainability isn’t a pick-and-choose deal, and you’re saying transparency, not translucency, which means being able to see everything.