Sustainability is becoming vital to individual consumers across all industries, and the fashion industry is no exception. Designers, established and emerging, are under pressure to deliver truly sustainably made collections that continue to excite, inspire and transform. In support of SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) WWG is sharing the work and insights of three designers for whom sustainability fuels their creativity and innovation.
Designer Aurélie Fontan speaks to WWG on what she terms ‘circular couture’, how her studio focuses on biodesign to produce materially sustainable pieces, and how her latest collection ‘Autarky’ uses storytelling to approach questions around the role of fashion in the future of the planet.
What is circular couture?
Circular Couture is a generic term I use to describe my practice as a sustainable fashion designer. Couture is different from fast fashion, but every single aspect of manufacturing a garment counts in terms of impact, and so I have created this concept to encompass the diverse aspects of my work relating to ethical manufacture, fabric sourcing, sampling and innovation. It aims to repurpose, upcycle, reinvent and regenerate. Design strategies such as Design for Disassembly, Design for slower Consumption and Design for recycling are examples of strategies I use in my work on a daily basis.
Samsung Metamatics Collection: Recycled leather dress made with 3D printing & robot printing. Photographed by Didier Fontan.
How have you implemented sustainable design practices without compromising on imagination?
I find sustainability a great challenge, and my preferred way to set myself constraints in my work. I was frustrated not to find materials I considered sustainable, so I started growing my own fabric organically. Sustainability practices require you to be even more creative, because it changes how you source fabrics, through working with niche or low value fabrics. I approached most of my ethical work with technology as an aid to add value to my work, giving it an elevated aesthetic.
Autarky 2021 Collection: 3D printed bodysuit. Photographed by Rhianna Thomas.
One of my proudest moments was when I presented my Kombucha lab-grown dress on the catwalk of Graduate Fashion Week in 2018. This dress took a year to make out of bacterial cellulose, and was intended as the first lab-grown Couture dress to be entirely grown from living organisms. I worked the fabric with a custom foiling method to make it more refined, and used soluble corn starch cable ties to make the seams hold. It could be buried in a backyard after a couple of years of wearing, and was specifically designed to biodegrade quickly.
Tensegrity GFW18 Collection: Kombucha dress. Photographed by Claire McIntyre.
Your AW2021 Autarky collection explores ecological feminism, planet regeneration and cross-species interaction. Could you expand on what you wanted to communicate through this collection?
This collection is storytelling-oriented. I wanted to create an initiatic journey of the future pioneers in the solarpunk aesthetic, who would need to explore other ecosystems with a more respectful approach, made possible through scientific studies of the living organisms we could encounter. It is designed as an immersive journey into the work of an Astrobioneer, a role I created by merging my own practice with biodesign, engineering and design. I wanted to explore how fashion and the act of wearing can relate in a deeper way to our ecosystems, that we could perhaps one day collaborate with our surroundings to make garments that would have less impact, and foster communication with the non-human. I wanted to critique the practice of ecological colonisation, which has been practiced by the West for centuries and destroyed precious and rare ecosystems. It demonstrates how design will work with biology in the future- which I practise with my fungi textile start-up Mykko - and how fashion can play a part in ecological regeneration.
Autarky 2021 Collection: 3D printed bodysuit. Photographed by Rhianna Thomas.
Autarky 2021 Collection: Crystal printed bodysuit. Photographed by Rhianna Thomas.
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