The first day of London Fashion Week started with the environmentally sustainable WOW factor in the VIN + OMI Spring / Summer 19 catwalk show held within the spectacular Victorian architecture at The Grand Terrace of St Pancras International.
VIN + OMI designs have a celebrity following with high profile figures including Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Prince Harry and Debbie Harry amongst others. The designers Vin and Omi delivered their largest collection with an impacting youthful energy and artistic style.
Bold colours and silhouettes were ‘cheeky’ and playful with fabric ‘cut outs’ and new edge ruffles. There were T-shirts with bold messages such as ‘EVERYTHING IS EVERYONE’, ‘BURST HIM’ and ‘QUEEN BIODEGRADE’ amongst others. VIN + OMI delivered a collection that was fun yet delivered a deeper message. “Thinking about what we wear; what we throw away. Thinking about what we buy. We all have to think more responsibly now. Thought is the new religion… eco religion. A religion that is growing out of the need to save the planet.”
VIN + OMI are all about sustainability, recycling and working with nature as they develop new eco materials. In this collection they showcased many of their different eco textiles and pro-cesses all with social impact projects attached. This season’s bags are the result of an exciting new collaboration with the London College of Fashion. The BIN 2 BODY project started at London Fashion Week Men’s where they collected the waste plastic bottles from fashion week and then processed them into durable rPET textiles that were then transformed into the bags.
The main items in the collection were only made from rPET textiles. Their rPET is a textile that is made from ocean or river clean up schemes. They either initiate the scheme or work with existing projects. With all their rPET social impact projects VIN + OMI make sure that the project gets funding for the col-lection and they work to provide ongoing support. London College of Fashion and the Centre for Sustain-able Fashion are pioneering new ways of working around fashion sustainability which makes for a perfect collaboration. New metal fabric showcased on the catwalk for the first time. This fabric was produced from recycled cans in the CAN 2 CATWALK project. Also shown were new plant-based fabrics. These were grown in the fields surrounding their Cotswolds studio. They were initially developing ways of using plants that grow wild and were readily available and could be grown anywhere. For the VIN + OMI SS19 collection they introduced a nettle fabric that has a raw unfinished feel and a more woven hybrid fabric of nettle, cow parsley, rosebay willow herb and flax. Also, in the collection was their established 4GANIC – a nettle-based fabric and Flaxley – a hybrid flax and cow parsley textile.
The VIN + OMI collection used organic latex from their plantation in Malaysia where they carefully look after the workers and their families and ensure the plantation has minimum negative impact on the environment and a positive impact on the villagers. Their shoes this season are a mash up of previous seasons and shoes destined for landfill. VIN + OMI believe with a bit of a twist, recycling can become fresh again.
Kim Grahame
kimgrahame@justnewsinternational.com
