To kick off our London Design Festival Coverage our London Inhabitant Ariana Mouyiaris took a trip out to DePLOY; a sustainably and DIY-focused fashion line. Open to the public until September 25th, DePLOY WorkSHOP allows visitors and shoppers alike to come in and watch the designers at work: altering, customizing and developing garments, while perusing wares and potential purchases. We love their DIY approach to sustainable style- they have a core collection that is infinitely customizable with secondary elements and continually cool as the seasons change!
Founded by Bernice Pan, an MA graduate and PhD holder from London’s Royal College of Art, DePLOY offers a more ethical approach to reinventing one’s wardrobe. With a collection of modularized, customizable clothing that lets you pare down and interchange ‘core’ and ‘secondary’ elements of each garment, for instance a bodice and sleeves, the options are endless: Dresses become tanks; smart suit jackets become trendy boleros. With a few quick snaps, dubbed the ‘popper system’, customers can alter items to create multiple outfits and return for secondary pieces to get a new look.
This multi-season approach allows an increasingly-conscious consumer to adapt their closet, rather than re-stock it, with every new collection. Fabrics are increasingly sourced from certified sustainable suppliers and their manufacturing sites are also moving to make the range increasingly efficient at all levels of the supply chain. Off-cuts from production are used to make accessories for DePLOY’s in-store sister line, Hennumi.
This approach takes a different sustainable strategy than just material greenness, promoting the idea of cutting back on consumption and adding to or subtracting bits from old garments, to make them multipurpose and fresh, depending on the context or occasion.
+ DePLOY WorkSHOP
+ London Design Festival 2007
+ PretParis
This is such a cool concept! I only wish I lived in London to experience it firsthand.
I am so impressed with Bernice Pan and her fabulous ideas….DePloy WorkSHOP is at the top of the list for my next trip to London. I am an ex-designer (for 40 years), now teaching Digital Fashion Design at both Parsons and FIT (where I had the pleasure of having Bernice in one of my classes). The major topic for our Digital Portfolio at Parsonss this year is, in fact “The Environment” so we are in sync all over the world, I hope.
My best to Bernice.
Best regards to whomever reads this,
Jane Beard