Young visionaries and the future of fashion

If you want to know what the future of fashion looks like it pays to keep an eye on emerging designers who create without boundaries. Sonia Sly meets emerging designers from around the world to find out what their vision for the future of fashion looks like and what concerns them most.

When was the last time you looked through your wardrobe and considered how much of it you actually wear and which garments have been ethically and sustainably produced?

It's probably not at the forefront of your mind when you're racing around to get ready for work or a busy day ahead.

In this podcast episode of My Heels Are Killing Me Sonia Sly meets young designers at iD Dunedin Fashion Week to find out how they see the future of fashion.

Despite a Colmar Brunton survey over a year ago finding that a majority of New Zealanders are interested in purchasing ethically and sustainably, 100 million kilograms of textile waste is thrown into rubbish dumps every year where it ends up amongst rotting fruit, used nappies and other horrors that you won't want to think about.

The problem affects the entire industry, and some designers are making clothes with longevity and are thinking about the environmental impacts of the industry.

Kiwi label, Kowtow has been ploughing ahead with its brand here and overseas and younger labels such as Ovna Ovich are also steadily finding their way into the marketplace.

But for those who are just about to set foot in the industry, producing sustainably is an immediate challenge. The question is, how to do it creatively?

Olivia Balle, 22, and Kristen Maeclem, 22, (below) both studied fashion at Massey University and recently showed their graduate collection at iD Dunedin Fashion Week where they were finalists for the Emerging Designer Awards.

They have an environmental ethos and when they saw garment production in India and China their eyes were opened to how it affects communities. This reinforced their desire to design clothing using only 'found' materials.

"When we were searching for inspiration we were looking at up-cycling but there's so much ugly stuff out there," says Maeclem. "That really put us off and I think other designers would feel the same."

The pair knew that they wanted to work with lots of colour and that their collection should be fun. So their creative process took them somewhere unexpected - rubbish bins - where they sourced soda cans, chip packets and even scrap pieces of thread.

"The materials we sourced determined what we made," says Maeclem. "We wanted to create something new but we didn't want to use new materials because there's so much stuff out there already that we can utilise."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details