Unveiled at LifeWear = a New Industry, an event held at Uniqlo’s Covent Garden studio, the new collection was created in collaboration with graduates from London’s Central Saint Martins BA Fashion Design course.
Maria Ledous, head of sustainability at Uniqlo Europe, told attendees that the students were given a very focused brief to help the brand find new ways to reuse or repair technical or high-volume returns.
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“We wanted them to create an actual collection using returned garments – including our hero items,” she explained.
Called Uniqlo x Central Saint Martins’ Everyday Re.Imagined, the collection needed to fit with Uniqlo’s LifeWear principles, which Ledous described as “simplicity, quality, and everyday wearability”.
Haseeb Hassan, a graduate student from Central Saint Martins, who was one of two students to work on the project, said he was initially attracted to the brief’s focus on garment life cycles.
“I was interested in this idea of a knot,” he explained. “A knot can be tied, untied and retied – and its different each time, depending on who does it.”
This sparked the initial inspiration behind his designs, as well as Furoshiki, a traditional wrapping cloth in Japan, often used to wrap products. “That informed a lot of my techniques,” he added, alongside patchworking he had used in his graduate collection.
“There are quite a few challenges when having to work with existing garments,” Hassan added. “You have to work with what is in front of you.”
Adding an additional challenge, Ledous said Uniqlo also wanted to recreate the designs within its studios across Europe. “It needed to have that efficiency so we could scale it.”
That said, as each item is made using available returned products the pieces are all unique. “I think this makes the project very beautiful,” Ledous added. “Each of the pieces really tells a story.”
Launching in 15 Uniqlo Studios across Europe this week, the collection is designed to provide a blueprint for future recycling projects.
“What’s unique about this is that we can take those designs and continually readapt and reproduce them – but we can also evolve them over time and even seasonally based on consumer feedback.”
Hassan also said the project had made him rethink sustainability. “In the fashion industry, sustainability is not always at the forefront, but this really puts it at the heart of the design process.
“The ambition is to really learn from this, to keep refining it and build a more scalable, long-term approach to circular design,” Ledous added.
