Teresa Collenette reports on the latest Shwop Lab event on behalf of Oxfam. Read on for her take on the ready to wear challenge with designer Gary Harvey.

Thanks to the launch of the M&S and Oxfam Clothes exchange in 2008, over 10 million items of clothing have already been donated to Oxfam raising about £8 million for their projects around the world. Now with the launch of the Shwop Lab promoting sustainable fashion, M&S together with Oxfam are inviting us all, consumers and creators to engage in the debate about the ‘fabric’ of our society, the clothes that we wear.  With the added participation of London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, the Shwop Lab has become a vibrant experimental space of creativity where we can look into the future of fashion and consider where our social responsibility lies. And what an inspiring place it is!

Yesterday I went down to the lab to meet Gary Harvey, eco designer extraordinaire!  Gary has made amazing couture dresses out of an array of materials from newspaper to cardboard boxes to unwanted baseball jackets.  He also famously made Livia Firth a fabulous Green carpet Oscars dress out of 11 different vintage dresses.  There are no limits to this man’s imagination!  Denim is maybe his first love and so it wasn’t surprising to arrive at the lab and see him leaning over a long table covered in jeans of every hue, scissors in hand.  His goal? To make a sweeping gown out of a pile of jeans donated to Oxfam. 

While Gary pinned and snipped we talked about how he got into making his own clothes and why we should all pick up needle and thread and become more closely involved in the clothes we choose to wear.  As Gary pointed out, living a more eco-aware life is not just a trend, it is a lifestyle choice.  We shouldn’t just do it for a season, we should incorporate eco-friendly choices into our daily lives, even if it is one small step at a time. 

Gary began customising his own clothes because he wanted to wear clothes that were individual and unique. Old jeans provided a good source of easily accessible fabric. Denim is apparently one of the hardest materials to recycle especially the waistbands with their rivets. Gary, however, can find a use for basically every thread of a pair of jeans from the side seams, ‘great fringing,’ to the bottom section of the legs … a ruff collar!

Gary’s message to all us fashion-lovers is that we should overcome our fear of the needle and start sewing again. We should ‘make do and mend’ and also create. This way we can awaken a new respect for clothing and its manufacture, as well as for the people who make our clothes all over the world. Often underpaid and undervalued, these people are indeed in many cases victims of social injustice.  

Take a look at what was created…

View the full Shwop Lab programme of events.

Find out more about shwopping.

What do you think of this designer denim creation? Have you ever tried to customise your old jeans? Let us know by leaving a comment below.