Denim’s Upcoming Leaders -Niamh Carr
London is nurturing some of best designers that will lead the future of denim.
At the recent Graduate Fashion Week in the U.K. city, 10 students entered their designs in Lenzing’s Sustainable Denim Competition. Lenzing partnered with Graduate Fashion Week to create a competition which furthers its vision of driving more sustainability in fashion and design.
Participating designers had to consider both the style of their entries and the materials that would make the product.
The top designer to take the 1,000-pound ($1,300) prize was Niamh Carr, a graduate of Manchester Fashion Institute, for an oversized denim jacket with eye-catching, but understated, pink detailing, and the jeans to match. To make the set, Carr used Candiani Denim with Lenzing’s TENCEL™ branded lyocell fibers.
The highlights in the whole experience for Carr were manifold, including, according to the designer, “Being given the opportunity to visit Black Horse Lane atelier, meet Han and hear his story. The amazingly talented team surrounding Han create a very inspiring atmosphere and aspirational business model. Selecting denim from various mills from around the world, I chose a rigid selvedge from Candiani with recycled cotton and TENCEL™ Lyocell with Refibra™ Technology, which was an incredible denim to work with as well as being from such a forward thinking mill.”
Judges in the competition said of Carr’s work, that it was “beautifully sewn and constructed,” that she had a “great understanding of denim and she had highlighted some of the key sustainable attributes of the Candiani denim, such as Kitotex.” More than that, another judge added, she “used sustainable trims and considered the threads and all parts of the garment.”
For Carr, sustainability is the way forward for fashion and denim will be a good medium to get there if the industry can work to lower its environmental impact.
How will it happen? According to Carr, “By making things last longer, with better, more hard wearing construction and by utilizing timeless designs in more sustainably made fabrics. We should design clothes that people can invest in rather than buying into a throw away style trend.”
What’s more, Carr believes responsible design is really the way to design—it isn’t just a trend.
“For me it shouldn’t be a trend to be sustainable,” Carr told Graduate Fashion Week in an interview. “The ‘sustainable’ choices I make are just because being responsible is the right thing to do, when there’s Corozo buttons next to plastic ones, why would I choose the plastic!”
It was likely a similar line of thinking that made Carr choose denim with TENCEL™ Lyocell.
“The quality of the fabrics created from it, they don’t feel anything like the old fashioned stereotypical idea of “eco-friendly” fabric,” Carr said. “They maintain the original aesthetic and feel but reduce our impact on the environment.”
When asked what “Carved in Blue” means to her, Carr said, “Having accessible, easy to navigate space to promote transparency within the fashion community is so, so important and more companies should have spaces like Carved in Blue for designers right through to consumers to access.”
NOTE: This is first in a series of three stories about the winners of the Lenzing’s Sustainable Denim Competition in partnership with Graduate Fashion Week.