Many unique garments have been showcased during London Fashion Week 2020, which took place February 14 through February 18. Although we may hold different opinions regarding which collection or specific garment was the best, one thing we can all agree on is that there were many incredible, upcycled pieces of clothing on the catwalk.
24-year-old environmentalist and entrepreneur, James Marshall, took upcycled clothing to a whole new level during the fashion industry event. Marshall collected abandoned tents after the Eden Festival near Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway in the United Kingdom that took place last summer to use for his Fashion Week collection.
While Marshall put a lot of work into his runway collection, he thanks family and friends for helping him collect tents. In addition, the eco-activist credits a non-profit that provides tents to refugees for helping provide him some leftover, broken tents.
“We also worked with a charity in England who collect tents at the end of festivals and give them to refugees,” Marshall explained. “They don’t normally collect broken tents, but they did and then sent them all over to us.”
With over 300 old tents in his possession, he had plenty of material for Fashion Designer Imogen Evans to turn the “trash” into fashion-friendly treasure. Like tents, the garments were “designed to be breathable and retain heat,” according to Marshall.
The finished products included stylish jackets, bucket hats, bumbags, and more. Never would you have expected that the items his models were wearing were made from tents!
Although for his recently-launched, Scottish-based clothing brand, 10T, Marshall explained that he will resort to sourcing his own materials for the creation of his garments.
“We will stick with collecting from sources ourselves, but we will start looking at other forms of waste. We already have a few ideas, he added. “What I want to hold on to is that we collect, manifest, sort, and clean the materials and make the products ourselves.”
Marshall expects to begin selling his environmentally-friendly apparel and accessories online by March of this year.
Overall, the Edinburgh Napier graduate thoroughly enjoyed partaking in Fashion Week.
“London Fashion Week was a really good experience. The days were pretty stressful, but it was such a good feeling to get that recognition,” Marshall admitted. “It was nice to have the validation that the process and idea works and that we can take the idea to market and continue with it.”
Listen to an interview with James Marshall below!
