Patrick McDowell in his studio at the JCA London Fashion Academy. Photograph by Aaron Bird

As the world’s fashion capitals gear up for fashion week, we’re celebrating designers who are paving the way for a more sustainable and ethical industry. Here, Patrick McDowell meets with Ella Johnson in his new studio at the JCA London Fashion Academy to discuss how sustainable fashion and social impact go hand in hand

Liverpool-born, London-based designer Patrick McDowell captured the world’s attention in 2018 with his graduate collection made from old Swarovski crystals and Burberry fabric donated by Christopher Bailey. Proving that sustainable fashion need not be synonymous with mundanity, McDowell was soon after nominated by Anna Wintour for the Stella McCartney Today for Tomorrow Award, and he subsequently went on to host London Fashion Week’s first ever Swap Shop.

Today, the 26-year-old has just been named the inaugural Designer in Residence at Professor Jimmy Choo’s JCA London Fashion Academy, where he will continue to make one collection a year under his eponymous label while carrying out sustainability advisory to other brands. But far from becoming a global brand overnight, McDowell is preoccupied with elevating other underprivileged creatives through scholarship programmes within the industry. Here, he explains why there is no time to waste.

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LUX: Your first interaction with upcycling was when you created a bag from an old pair of jeans at 13. Was that a consciously sustainable act?
Patrick McDowell: It was the defiant act of a child who had been told ‘no’. Typically, in very working-class areas, your school uniform is bought three sizes too big so that you can grow into it. I was just sick of this really long satchel bashing against my knees, so I made one that was shorter out of a pair of jeans I knew I was never going to wear. Nowadays, it’s quite cool for kids to chop and make stuff, but back then it was all about buying. So, while I had made the bag with a needle and thread, people didn’t believe that I had made it. I quite liked that reaction, because I thought I must be alright [at fashion] if people thought I’d bought it.

It was crazy, really: I was this curly haired, 13-year-old child – nobody could tell if I was a boy or girl – walking around in this very sad uniform with these elaborate handbags that I had been making! It was a very working-class suburb of Liverpool, and looking back, I suppose it must have been quite unusual.

LUX: Your ‘Catholic Fairytales’ collection addresses some of that disillusionment.
Patrick McDowell: I had a very Catholic upbringing. Every day started with a prayer. As a gay person growing up in that, it was quite challenging to realise that everything built around you was disagreeing with who you were. At 13, my Religious Studies teacher told me that it was OK to be gay, so long as I didn’t act on those feelings.

So, it was quite therapeutic doing ‘Catholic Fairytales’. The final irony of that collection is that what I did is way less avant-garde than actual priest robes, which have months and months of handwork. The recent history of the Catholic church is, on the whole, one of extreme extravagance. I did this very big, phallic hat for my collection, which people were surprised that I hadn’t invented – there was a papal tiara that shape, which they got rid of in the 1950s because they thought it was too over the top.

Read more: Patrick Sun on Promoting LGBTQ+ Art in Asia

LUX: What was your experience of joining Central Saint Martins as a northern, working-class, queer individual?
Patrick McDowell: I almost quit in the beginning. I somehow managed to get in without a foundation course, which is not meant to happen, and I failed the first year. I had such a panic because I’d spent six years trying to get there, but never considered what I’d do when I got there. All that self-limiting stuff comes from the class system and growing up working class. The school system is awful. It’s one of the reasons why I’m now such an advocate for creative education. I experienced how beneficial that kind of education can be, but also how hard it can be if you don’t do the ‘right’ things in the ‘right’ way.

LUX: Do you feel a responsibility to elevate others in the industry?
Patrick McDowell: I’m very aware of how privileged I am, but my journey, from where I came from to where I am now, was a lonely one. I embody that journey, but at the same time, I graduated from one of the world’s best fashion schools with a collection made from Burberry fabric donated by Christopher Bailey, and old Swarovski crystals, with a British Fashion Council scholarship. All of those things opened the doors for me. That’s why I cried every day for two weeks, walking across Hanover Square, when I first came [to the Jimmy Choo Academy]: I was so overwhelmed. But I’ve realised that by letting myself get so overwhelmed, I wasn’t doing anything productive. When I started looking into it, I was shocked that there aren’t more scholarships available in schools. It’s so easy and inexpensive for brands to do it, plus there’s no bad press for starting one. That’s why I built a scholarship programme into my next contract with Pinko. It’s also why I’ll always push for as many social and educational initiatives as I can. It’s usually something people come to later in their career, but in my view, there’s no time to waste.

LUX: You say that it is not only a designer’s responsibility to ‘create beautiful clothing’, but to also ‘redesign the systems they sit within’. How are you doing that from a sustainability perspective?
Patrick McDowell: I was already sustainability ambassador for the Jimmy Choo Academy, and now I’m also Designer in Residence. I only do one avant-garde collection a year. I’ll be doing my next collection in September so there’s no rush, which I appreciate: I can do it when I want to do it.

The rest of the year, I work with brands, schools, and Graduate Fashion Week. I mentioned Pinko, with whom we have a social corporate and sustainability focus. I’m about to do my fourth collection with them, but this year we’ve expanded it so that the business is also committing to 30% of this overall product having a sustainable attribute. We’re also starting a social sustainability programme to start scholarships and a stronger internship programme.

I’m not interested in constantly producing thousands of the same dress in slightly different colours because that’s how you grow a brand through a wholesale business model. I’m not desperate to become a global brand overnight. The impact I’ve made with all the projects I have done has been way bigger because I’ve worked with bigger organisations to make it happen, rather than going at it alone.

Photograph by Aaron Bird

LUX: This disinterest in building a brand overnight, is it personal to you or common among your peers?
Patrick McDowell: These days, it’s definitely more common for Central Saint Martins students to say they want to do less or fewer collections. Richard Malone is a great example of someone who has a very successful business that he’s intentionally keeping at a certain size, and making beautiful pieces that a certain type of person wants to buy or order. He has a made-to-order service in Selfridges. I never thought I’d see that!

Read more: Markus Müller on the Importance of Global Sustainability Standards

LUX: Would you say that sustainability is a modern day luxury?
Patrick McDowell: I think it is a version of luxury that we see now. For a long time, harm was  fashionable. ‘How many exotic animals are in your Birkin? Mine’s got four’ – that kind of thing. Now, people take pride in saying ‘my jacket didn’t harm anything’. That’s an interesting shift. But it’s complicated, because for some people, wearing an outfit from a fast fashion company is their only way to feel like the person they want to be. I’m not going to be the person sitting in this Mayfair studio telling them that fast fashion is wrong. If that’s something that keeps that person going, then they need that. It always goes back to education and class systems, and to the fact that this country is set up to stifle the majority of the people that exist in it. And remembering too that it’s not sustainable either to completely change a business that supports thousands of people, because those people would then have no jobs.

LUX: What has the response been from the brands with whom you work on sustainability initiatives?
Patrick McDowell: It can sometimes be difficult going into a brand and disrupting the whole way they work. A brand is used to working in a very linear way, and then I go in and start asking people to work with each other who would never usually each other. But all those connections are exactly what businesses will need to grow and survive. I hope that I can do these things with brands and then, once I leave, there’s the infrastructure in place for them to do the work themselves.

LUX: It’s as though brands need external disruption to make change.
Patrick McDowell: It can’t happen with the teams as they already exist. Everyone is so busy; it just doesn’t work. But they’re going to have to start somewhere, so that’s where my consultancy approach helps. I’m not locked into these crazy fashion cycles. We have to rethink everything right now, to find creative solutions for everything from journalism to mathematics, science to fashion. It’s an extremely modern way to be working – to be passion- and emotion-led. It’s what resonates.

LUX: During London Fashion Week in 2020, you collaborated with the Global Fashion Exchange to host the first Swap Shop. What was that like?
Patrick McDowell: It was the first Swap Shop for any major fashion week, and we re-circulated 500 garments in 3 days. I always think that fashion weeks should be idea hubs; you don’t have to have it fully formed – just show an idea. We digitally tokenised all the swaps through QR codes, and we didn’t know if it was going to work, but now everyone’s doing it!

LUX: Is this pressure for perfection holding fashion back sustainability-wise?
Patrick McDowell: Sometimes we’re so scared of making everything so polished – especially with sustainability, where there is so much anxiety. We’d rather say nothing, because if we say something, people are going to criticise everything. But we all have a responsibility to just let people try things out and make mistakes. People think businesses are these holy grails of perfection, but the fact is they’re made by people, and people make mistakes.

LUX: It sounds like we need to put the fun back into fashion.
Patrick McDowell: Yes, you have to do sustainability in a way that’s fashion. It’s still fashion week, and it has to work for fashion week. It has to look great. Don’t be lazy. Just because you remade something doesn’t mean it can look bad, it still needs to be aspirational!

That’s one of the reasons my graduate collection went so well, I think, because it was all made from this old Burberry fabric, and it was glam, fab, and clean. It’s an easy message to get your head around: old stuff, turned into new stuff. I haven’t reinvented the wheel, or spent 20 years trying to get the spider make silk. Not everything has to be life-changing.

LUX: Can you tell us about your next collection?
Patrick McDowell: Marie Antoinette.

Find out more: patrickmcdowell.co.uk

All fashion images: Patrick McDowell’s ‘Catholic Fairytales’ collection, photographed by Aaron Bird

The Bouquet Light designed by Tord Boontje for Habitat in 2014

For product designer Tord Boontje, material is all. Whether made from upcycled blankets or crystals, his designs for anything from chandeliers to self-assembly chairs marry function with his signature playfulness. Torri Mundell meets him (virtually) at his new studio in London to talk about his work while normal life has been on hold

Tord Boontje 

Few occasions compel you to tidy your surroundings like the prospect of a Zoom video call with a globally renowned product designer. What would Tord Boontje, the former Head of Design Products at the Royal College of Art and the originator of one of Habitat’s most successful home accessories of all time (the Garland light, first launched in 2002), make of a design civilian’s cluttered kitchen?

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Thankfully, Boontje’s aesthetic is not calibrated towards austere minimalism. In fact, he is renowned for injecting notes of whimsy or romance into contemporary design. On a virtual tour of his bright new London studio, you can spot a few of his artful pendant lights as well as shelves full of intriguing decorative pieces, prototypes and ephemera. He also points out the drawing and photographs tacked on the walls: “It helps me to look at something and slowly think about it over weeks. And I like having materials around that you can pick up.”

Transglass vessels for Artecnica, 1997. Image courtesy of Artecnica. © Jerry Garns Studio 20111

Materials – and sustainable materials in particular – have always been a preoccupation for the Dutch-born designer; his early 1998 Rough and Ready furniture collection combined simple wood with upcycled old blankets and discarded packaging. And though he is an advocate for accessible design, he also collaborates with luxury brands when they offer an opportunity to “use really good materials, make [designs that are] long lasting and manufactured in an ethical way”. Moroso, with whom he has collaborated on a range of seating, is a good example. “There’s an honesty with the materials they use. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it. I feel uncomfortable about making things look expensive just for the sake of it.”

The Lustrous Aura chandelier for Swarovski, 2017. Image courtesy of Swarovski

Boontje graduated from the Royal College of Art with a master’s degree in 1994 and he established Studio Tord Boontje in London two years later. Since then, two decades of launching new products and collaborating with clients has honed his creative process. He knows, for instance, to treat a new idea tenderly. “It’s good to have lots of opinions, but ideas can only develop with people you trust,” he says. He often talks them over first with his wife, Emma, an artist. And only after sketching and creating models from paper, card or foam, will he work on screen. “My colleague Tommy usually does the 3D modelling. It’s better at that stage to be one step removed; I can be more objective about what’s in front of us.”

The Transglass chandelier, 2015 (top) and the Tangle Globe ceiling light, 2011. Both designed for Artecnica. Images courtesy of Artecnica

He finds himself endlessly inspired by light. “When I walk around in a city or a forest, I always look at the way light reflects on the buildings or filters through leaves on the trees and makes patterns and shadows… Lighting can also make a huge impact on space, not just decoratively but in the light it casts into the room.” This fascination has shaped some of his best-known designs, from the aforementioned Garland, to Icarus, the feathery paper shade he developed with Artecnica, to the crystal chandeliers he reimagined for Swarovski and Sun – Light of Love for Foscarini.

Read more: Superblue’s experiential art centres & innovative business model

For Boontje, lockdown has been a creatively productive time. “A lot of my projects with clients have been on hold, so I’ve had time to reflect and to look into products I can make independently.” Studio Tord Boontje’s latest collection from 2020 is called Do-It-Together, debuting with a pendant light of organic cotton that customers can customise and a handsome self-assembly wooden chair. The chair’s components – the birch plywood seat and back, the solid beech frame, and the bolts and wing nuts – arrive in a package ready to be assembled at home. “We also give suggestions about how you can colour your chair, using skins from beetroots, or how to paint it with natural beeswax or oils,” he adds.

The Radiant table light for Swarovski, 2019. Image courtesy of Swarovski

Offering customers the inspiration to make something from scratch taps into a spirit of resourcefulness that feels very current. “During lockdown, we saw sales of arts and crafts and sewing machines shoot up. We want the pleasure of new things, but we’re changing our relationship with how we consume them.” Will we hold on to things longer if we had a hand in making them? “Absolutely. People who make their own things also learn how to fix them if they break,” he says, before adding, “The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”

Find out more: tordboontje.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue.