Sustainable Design w/ Cecilie Bahnsen
Business of Fashion regularly discusses sustainable design and practices, and designates a whole category to the issues, progress, and possibilities seen within the industry. The article “Independent Brands Must Change Their Business Strategies” by Zoe Suen and Rachel Deeley highlights the Danish designer, Cecilie Bahnsen, who I am focusing on for my final project. The article begins with describing Bahnsen’s design habit of holding onto old materials, fabrics, and scraps from previous collections. This habit is now her new business practice which she unveiled with her Pre-Spring 2021 upcycled collection named Encore. Made with left-over Fall/Winter 2020 cable knits and excess Spring/Summer 2019 beading, the collection will be the first of many to support her new repurposing concept (Suen and Deeley, BOF). “This feeds into Bahnsen and Managing Director Kristine Lobner’s wider business revamp: one that aims to make less, more responsibly, and with no waste” (BOF). While this revamp was in response to the new normal experienced from the coronavirus, for small brands like Cecilie Bahnsen, this design shift has always been on the horizon.
The article explains: “For cash-strapped companies, dipping into deadstock and upcycling is a cost-effective way to create something new and ease any glut of unsold inventory; digitizing elements of design and marketing can reduce waste and cost; and the promise of ethical and environmentally responsible products is an increasingly important selling point...”(BOF). This overarching statement is and can be applied to almost every aspect of retail including design and product development, visual merchandising, and marketing and advertising. We, meaning both companies and consumers, must make a conscious effort to reduce waste, embrace new technologies, and advocate for ethical business practices.
Designers and retailers must become creative when reimagining unsold and/or surplus product, materials, design elements, displays, and fixtures in order to give them fresh value. Dio Kurazawa, founding partner of sustainable supply chain advisory The Bear Scouts, states how “you have to design into responsible fashion,” and that you must ask yourself, “what am I getting a bigger yield from when I shred it down?” (BOF). There can be way more value in reducing, reusing, and recycling compared to the old habit of throwing out. Other new business ideas that are gaining popularity within retail include take-back schemes, lifetime repairs, and resale. The cyclicality of fashion is slowing down and restructuring, presales and preorders are beginning to appear more cost-efficient, and the obsession with ‘the new’ is losing its grounds. The consumer is finally taking sustainability seriously demanding new practices over outdated habits within the fashion industry.
“I think it’s so oppressive, this idea that everything has to be new.”
Works Cited
Suen, Zoe, and Rachel Deeley. “Independent Brands Must Change Their Business Strategies.” BOF, The Business of Fashion, 3 Aug. 2020, www.businessoffashion.com/articles/professional/independent-brands-must-change- business-strategy-sustainable-responsible-covid-19.
