Image via Christopher Raeburn
For English designer Christopher Raeburn, sustainability is key. His Autumn / Winter 17 collection, showcased last weekend at London Fashion Week Men’s, placed sustainability and recycling front and centre. Recycled and remade materials featured in some of the collections key pieces, with repurposed military gear being a stable of the collection. As well as this, the show saw the latest stage of his ongoing collaboration with Eastpak and the unveiling of his mascot for this season, a chameleon. We caught up with Christopher after his show to talk about his inspirations for this season’s collection.
What were you trying to achieve with this collection and with this show?
The collection is called “cut and shut”. I was really interested in this amazing artist called Ellsworth Kelly, who during the Second World War was part of a deception unit call the Ghost Army. The whole thing was never about fighting anyone it was about deceiving people, so he did everything from making inflatable tanks to camouflaging things. I was just really interested in the playful nature of that. And then with the work that we do, particularly around remade, it was so interesting to push further than we ever have done before on the remade and sustainable side. So actually everything you see here is either remade or recycled or its organic and sustainable fabric, the whole collection. As a company we’ve been focusing on each product area and just working out how we can improve it. Maybe it sounds a little bit simple but to me it just makes sense.
Why is that remaking, recycling idea so important to you?
For me it just provides us with such a rich narrative to begin with, it’s what I’m obsessed by anyway. So it’s like turning your hobby into your job and you’re up and running. And I love the fact that we can work with everything from bomb disposal uniforms to blankets to parachutes to everything else and it really helps us, I hope, to stay fresh. Each season you’re always finding this mad stuff that helps to push things forward.
Obviously things like bomb disposal suits and parachutes are quite serious things.
Yeah, but then the same with the military jackets that we worked with for Eastpak and the chameleon. The interesting thing for me is how you take something, as you say, inherently serious or sometimes with a negative connotation and then you can make something contemporary, wearable, beautiful, playful, all of those things. That’s what drives me.
Why the chameleons this time?
The best camouflaging creature, surely. But then to have one with the little hints of fluoro, so it’s a little like he’s a little bit short circuit. That’s what I love about them.
