My search for brands that adopt a sustainable approach to making and marketing their products continues and I came across The Well Worn on Instagram. It's interesting how most of the businesses I've come across are small. I suppose smaller scale makes a truly sustainable approach easier, but it would be good to hear of larger suppliers of menswear and accessories who can, because of their size, have a really significant impact.
However, back to The Well Worn. I love indigo blue and was attracted by a much repaired indigo scarf shown by Emma Shaw, founder of The Well Worn on Instagram (links below) and couldn't resist buying it.
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| Everything you see is old and well-repaired. Wearing The Well Worn scarf |
The Well Worn makes clothes from vintage and sustainable fabrics and take the view that the signs of repair can enhance the appearance of an object, using sashiko stitching (I will have more on this stitched repair technique in a future Sustainable Style feature) to repair tears and join pieces of fabric.
I contacted Emma Shaw to ask her about her brand. This is what she told me:
ES: The idea for The Well Worn came about whilst I was on the beach with my kids! I was on sabbatical and trying to work out what next. After 20 years in the corporate fashion industry I still loved designing and making clothes, but not the compromise that often came too. I decided to try and find a better way: something more personal, more me. A better way to create beautiful clothes, without compromise to the design and the environment.
So The Well Worn is a combination of my three passions; dresses, vintage and UK production where I started my career. We up-cycle classic vintage pieces and create beautiful dresses in recycled and sustainable fabrics.
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| Work on vintage and upcycled clothes and fabrics by The Well Worn |
Leaving a small imprint in everything we do is at the heart of all our decisions - looking after our planet for the next generation. Everything is made in the UK and we make only limited edition runs. We don't like landfill. We are proud of what we do and hand number each of our pieces.
GF: What are the themes of the brand and what sort of products do you sell?
ES: At the core of what we do is a respect for beautifully designed, well made products. More often than not this is found in vintage pieces which we use and reference in our design work. We are driven by attention to detail - the workwear, the well made, the well worn. Inspired by craftsmanship of makers past & present. We want to breathe new life into the worn - creating the vintage of the future. And we are hoping to find our community of like minded creatives and makers.
We are focused on upcycling iconic vintage pieces, chore jackets, worker shirts, denim pieces and beautiful vintage indigo fabrics. Items that get better with age and form staple pieces in your wardrobe. Alongside this we are developing limited edition runs of dresses which are made from recycled and sustainable fabrics.
GF: What techniques do you use to repair and renew the items you sell?
ES: We are definitely not masters, but love sashiko and boro which are traditional Japanese ways of repair. Sashiko translates directly as “little stabs”: normally a white cotton thread on an indigo fabric. This visible mending technique has been practised in Japan for thousands of years and stems from wabi-sabi - a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.
Sashiko stitch is an antidote to the fast fashion world. It is used to reinforce points of wear on a garment and to repair worn places or tears with patches - creating boro. The running stitch is also used for decorative purposes. We use the technique for both and by playing with the stitch have developed our signature star stitch normally found on our jackets. Clothes stitched and repaired in this way can be said to embrace the concept of ‘wabi sabi'.
We look at a piece of worn clothing and embrace the flaws and tears. These tell us the story of the garment. It’s history. Our job is to continue the story for future generations. Most of us have a pair of jeans that we treasure, no matter how worn they might be. For me, it's the breaks and tears that make our favourite clothes special. A great book to read is ‘Wabi-Sabi, for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers’ by Leonard Koren.
GF: Tell me more about the cloth that the scarf I bought from you is made of?
ES: It's a vintage handmade indigo dyed cloth from the region of Burkina Faso in West Africa. The textile is handwoven from raw, unprocessed cotton in narrow strips which are hand sewn together to form bigger cloths. Traditionally worn as a wrapper, these cloths all unique in shade, size and wear. Indigo is among the oldest dyes to be used for textile dyeing and printing. Indigo is an organic dye extracted from the leaves of certain plants.
With a distinctive blue colour true indigo pieces will fade and age creating beautiful washed out tones. I've also got some Indigos from Japan that will feature over the next few weeks.
GF: How do you see the brand developing?
ES: I would love to expand our range of upcycled vintage to include more iconic pieces - there is such a treasure trove out there that would benefit from some TLC to be brought back to life. Our dresses we are developing in recycled and sustainable fabrics will always be on short runs as we never want to make more than is wanted. But I have had requests to look at other product areas so maybe that's something for the future?
I want to encourage more people to think about what they are buying and consider that there are different choices that can be made. We can still create, support UK makers and their skills, and avoid much of the negative impact caused by the clothing & textile industry.
With thanks to Emma of The Well Worn.
Links:
See The Well Worn.
This is an unsponsored feature.
