Bethany Williams offers a glimpse of sustainable fashion’s future
By Bella Webb
Bethany Williams is the British designer best known for upcycling waste fabrics into lively, collaged garments, but it’s her sustainability practices winning consumers and buyers over.
Experts say other brands can learn from 31-year-old London-based Williams’ holistic approach to sustainability: she combines upcycled fabrics and social manufacturing (using fashion production to create dignified work for communities struggling to find employment), with plastic-free packaging and the London Living Wage (a rate higher than the national minimum intended to lift more Londoners out of poverty and improve quality of life).
“We used to buy into designers’ aspirational worlds, but now we buy into their aspirational actions,” says Andrew Groves, menswear specialist and professor of fashion design at London’s University of Westminster. “Bethany’s world is a blueprint for the future of fashion.”