عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Fashion

Burberry Set for 'Britishness' Refocus at London Fashion Week

Burberry Set for 'Britishness' Refocus at London Fashion Week
TT
TT

Burberry Set for 'Britishness' Refocus at London Fashion Week

Burberry Set for 'Britishness' Refocus at London Fashion Week

London fashion week kicks off Friday with Daniel Lee's debut as Burberry creative director among the highlights, as the brand looks set to return to its British roots.

The five-day event is dedicated to Vivienne Westwood, the doyenne of British design, who died in December aged 81, AFP said.

"Her work not only changed the fashion industry, giving birth to and defining punk, but it also drove positive change globally," the British Fashion Council said in a statement.

London fashion week will feature 47 catwalk shows and a host of other events as well as playing host to Ukrainian fashion week, displaced by the ongoing conflict.

Three Ukrainian designers -- Frolov, Ksenia Schnaider and Paskal -- will show their works as part of the Support Ukrainian Fashion initiative.

New names on the schedule for the digital/physical hybrid event include Noon By Noor, Perte D'Ego, Sinead Gorey, Talia Byre and Tove.

Ahead of Lee's Burberry debut on Monday, fashion watchers have already picked up strong hints about where he intends to take the brand.

Lee, the former creative director of Bottega Veneta, took over from Italian designer Riccardo Tisci in October 2022.

- Iconic logo returns -
In a teaser released earlier this month, his first creative campaign features a cast of British talent including Lennon Gallagher, Raheem Sterling, Liberty Ross, rapper Shygirl and Vanessa Redgrave -- along with South Korean actress Jun Ji-hyun -- shot in Trafalgar Square and on Albert Bridge.

Although the advertisements featured existing products not designed by Lee, they appear to give a clear indication of his intention to put the emphasis firmly back on the brand's British heritage.

Burberry's iconic equestrian knight logo has also made a comeback, having been ditched by Tisci in 2018.

Another highlight of the autumn/winter 2023 collections will be Moncler Genius's debut, which will go up against Burberry on Monday.

The Art of Genius 2023 will be a "live show on a grand scale", aiming to go "beyond fashion" through an exploration of the power of collaboration across the creative industries, according to the brand.

The line-up will include previous friends and collaborators such as Alicia Keys, Rick Owens and Pharrell Williams.

"It feels like a huge relief to be able to hold London fashion week again," British Fashion Council head Caroline Rush told AFP.

September's event had to be largely scaled back due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, just as the fashion world was getting back on its feet after the pandemic.

Paying tribute to Westwood, Rush said she "in many ways encapsulated what people think of when they think of British fashion -- that creative freedom, the ability to really challenge societal norms".

- 'Enormous legacy' -
Rush said a memorial service for Westwood on Thursday -- attended by a host of famous faces from Kate Moss to Victoria Beckham -- had been a chance to remember her not just for her "brilliant designs" but also for her activism.

"She has an enormous legacy... It's hard to believe that she is no longer with us," she said.

"But I think there is a sense that her spirit lives on through the creativity of the many young designers who were inspired by her."

Most Viewed

 
 
Fashion

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
TT
TT

As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana are Finding a Solution

Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)
Attendees at a thrift and an upcycle show pose for a photograph in Accra, Ghana, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls selling used and low-quality apparel imported from the West.
At the other end of the street, an upcycled fashion and thrifting festival unfolds with glamour and glitz, The Associated Press reported. Models parade along a makeshift runway in outfits that designers created out of discarded materials from the Kantamanto market, ranging from floral blouses and denim jeans to leather bags, caps and socks.
The festival is called Obroni Wawu October, using a phrase that in the local Akan language means “dead white man’s clothes.” Organizers see the event as a small way to disrupt a destructive cycle that has made Western overconsumption into an environmental problem in Africa, where some of the worn-out clothes end up in waterways and garbage dumps.
“Instead of allowing (textile waste) to choke our gutters or beaches or landfills, I decided to use it to create something ... for us to use again,” said Richard Asante Palmer, one of the designers at the annual festival organized by the Or Foundation, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of environmental justice and fashion development.
Ghana is one of Africa's leading importers of used clothing. It also ships some of what it gets from the United Kingdom, Canada, China and elsewhere to other West African nations, the United States and the UK, according to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers Association.
Some of the imported clothes arrive in such poor shape, however, that vendors dispose of them to make room for the next shipments. On average, 40% of the millions of garments exported weekly to Ghana end up as waste, according to Neesha-Ann Longdon, the business manager for the Or Foundation’s executive director.
The clothing dealers association, in a report published earlier this year on the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the nation’s secondhand clothing trade, cited a much lower estimate, saying only 5% of the items that reach Ghana in bulk are thrown out because they cannot be sold or reused.
In many African countries, citizens typically buy preowned clothes — as well as used cars, phones and other necessities — because they cost less than new ones. Secondhand shopping also gives them a chance to score designer goods that most people in the region can only dream of.
But neither Ghana's fast-growing population of 34 million people nor its overtaxed infrastructure is equipped to absorb the amount of cast-off attire entering the country. Mounds of textile waste litter beaches across the capital, Accra, and the lagoon which serves as the main outlet through which the city’s major drainage channels empty into the Gulf of Guinea.
“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production, which is characterized here as higher volumes of lower-quality goods,” Longdon said.
Jonathan Abbey, a fisherman in the area, said his nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said.
The ease of online shopping has sped up this waste cycle, according to Andrew Brooks, a King’s College London researcher and the author of “Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes.”
In countries like the UK, unwanted purchases often end up as charity donations, but clothes are sometimes stolen from street donation bins and exported to places where the consumer demand is perceived to be higher, Brooks said. Authorities rarely investigate such theft because the clothes are "seen as low-value items,” he said.
Donors, meanwhile, think their castoffs are “going to be recycled rather than reused, or given away rather than sold, or sold in the UK rather than exported overseas,” Brooks said.
The volume of secondhand clothing sent to Africa has led to complaints of the continent being used as a dumping ground. In 2018, Rwanda raised tariffs on such imports in defiance of US pressure, citing concerns the West's refuse undermined efforts to strengthen the domestic textile industry. Last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would ban imports of clothing “from dead people.”
Trade restrictions might not go far in either reducing textile pollution or encouraging clothing production in Africa, where profits are low and incentives for designers are few, experts say.
In the absence of adequate measures to stop the pollution, organizations like the Or Foundation are trying to make a difference by rallying young people and fashion creators to find a good use for scrapped materials.
Ghana's beaches had hardly any discarded clothes on them before the country's waste management problems worsened in recent years, foundation co-founder Allison Bartella said.
“Fast forward to today, 2024, there are mountains of textile waste on the beaches,” she said.