Redesigning Fashion: How to Change the World in Style

Eco fashion has found its (buffed and manicured) feet, stepped into its heels and walked miles to change the ‘throwaway’ nature of fashion. Destination – Stockport Hat Works Museum, where the new exhibition Redesigning Fashion – How to Change the World in Style is sure to turn heads (see what we did there?)

Guest-curated by milliner Sharon Bainbridge, the exhibition explores the similarities (and differences) between the 1940s ‘make do and mend’ era and present day’s sustainable fashion takeover. Bainbridge explains: “This exhibition will highlight the variety of opportunities within sustainable design and show that you can still be ahead of fashion yet be helping the environment.”

The 1940s can now be seen as a crucial moment in fashion, where producing a finished piece with very few materials was a necessity due to clothes rationing, but was also a means of self-expession and creativity. Today, a new wave of designers have again begun to look into a more sustainable way of producing high fashion, examining both ecological and ethical issues and revealing their ‘it’s easy being green’ attitude.

Overlapping past and present, the exhibition will display a vast array of 1940s headpieces, loaned from the Platt Hall Gallery of Costume in Manchester, alongside modern offerings from today’s leading designers in sustainable head-wear, including Mumbai-based installation artist, milliner and fashion stylist Shilpa Chavan, founder of the global brand Little Shilpa, Elsa Cappelli Hats, upcycling milliner Jane Fryers, and fashion designer Lizzie Harrison of Antiform. This celebration of ‘eco chic’ is a must-see for sustainable fashion lovers. [Rosie Green]