A new pop-up exhibition launches in London’s East Village this month, with work from 10 designers whose work offers a rejection of the fashion industry’s bad habits and toxic culture.
The pop-up, titled Showcase with a Difference: Product & Purpose, is part of a new Fashion Open Studio residency at The Lab E20, East Village’s creative community hub.
Open from February 11-27, the residency will also feature a programme of workshops and events with emerging designers, demonstrating how clothes can be made without using non-renewable resources, promote wellbeing and positivity, and embrace new business models.
Established in 2017, Fashion Open Studio is Fashion Revolution’s mentoring initiative that works to improve the way clothes are made and offers an opportunity to share innovative and creative solutions to the issues the fashion industry faces today.
The exhibition is art directed by multi-award-winning designer Matthew Needham and will be curated with the aim of changing the way we think about clothes.
Ten fashion designers and their approaches and motivations to creating fashion will be presented throughout the showcase, including Anciela, Ifeanyi Okwuadi, Joao Maraschin, Lueder, Martina Spetlova, Renate Brenha and Soup Archive. Three designers, Rahemur Rahman, Noki aka JJ Hudson and Revival London will also be hosting a series of weekly workshops and talks to give a deeper understanding of how and why they work.
Orsola de Castro, Global Creative Director, Fashion Revolution, said: “The fashion industry recognises it must change to reduce its damaging environmental impact and exploitation that thrives on inequality and unethical practices. Showcase with a Difference will present a diverse range of pioneering solutions to the many problems facing the industry, from excess production, to waste, pollution, convoluted supply chains, unsustainable textiles, and business models using a system that is no longer fit for purpose. The designers in the exhibition are leading the way for a generation that expects clothes to be made fairly, responsibly and with transparency.”
Located at 3-4 East Park Walk, The Lab E20 has been designed and produced by Christopher Raeburn, founder of RÆBURN, with a focus on positive fashion and sustainable living, supported by Get Living.
As the neighbourhood’s operator, Get Living manages the 30 independent retailers and businesses and 2,000 rental homes that help make the former Athletes’ Village the thriving community that it is today.
Richard Allen, Get Living’s Head of Retail and project manager of The Lab E20, said: “Since launching The Lab E20 last summer, it has become a hub for creativity and inspiration with sustainable living at the core. From clothes-recycling-disco-workshops to thought-provoking exhibitions about building life on Mars, we’ve brought innovators in fashion and design into the space for East Village residents and wider East London communities to learn from and engage with. Showcase With A Difference will build on this, encouraging us all to think more about where our clothes come from, and where they go, and make more mindful choices in our everyday lives.”
