Fashion designers often use bespoke fabrics to give their creations an edge, but the latest from Vin + Omi is a hedge and shoulders above what else you might see on the catwalks this London Fashion Week. The world-first fabric the design duo unveiled tonight first took root in the King’s back garden.
Debuted in the form of a striking opera coat on the British eco-punks’ runway on Thursday night, the four metres of dark pink, multi-textured cloth could be mistaken for duchess satin. In fact, this world-first franken-fabric began its life as an overgrown ornamental shrub known as red dogwood at Sandringham.
The coral-hued woody bush is native to Siberia and China. It is also a thriving resident on the King’s beloved Norfolk estate — and subject to heavy pruning. That is how it came to be the key ingredient for Vin + Omi’s newest plant-based fabric. The designers, who consider themselves scientists as much as avant-garde creatives, manufacture materials using whatever the royal estates have growing spare.
Sandringham’s grounds are fertile territory for Vin + Omi
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Their way with waste has earned them a long-standing, blooming partnership with Charles. Like haute Wombles, he lets them raid excess materials from Sandringham and Highgrove for their fashion collections. Another dress on show last night had been crafted using a new untearable, paper-like material made of milk cartons from the estate visitors’ centre’s recycling bins.
The pair aren’t picky. They will take whatever they can lay their hands on. The more difficult for the King’s estates to do away with, the better.
“We don’t go down [to Sandringham] and request something. They call us up and go: ‘We’ve got all of this waste, use it,’” Vin Cooper explained in an interview before the show.
“We use the bits that they don’t know what to do with, or they’re just going to throw away and we’ll turn it into something. The King’s really enjoying the fact that we’re just working with odd materials. He’s so good at utilising his waste in other ways, but we’re doing the fiddly bits.”
Vin + Omi hope to show the public, particularly fashion students, that they can “recycle virtually anything”.
Leith with Omi and Vin
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They mean it. At the show Dame Prue Leith modelled a red gown that was once an RAF parachute. A run of second-hand bridal gowns from the British Heart Foundation had been made new with eco-dyes and fresh, eye-catching detailing.
None of these pieces will be on sale. Vin + Omi give their clothes to their celebrity fans, donate them for research or loan them to the likes of the V&A.
As for what might be coming next, just book a visit to Sandringham. Anything looking particularly lush after this summer’s sunshine is ripe for Vin + Omi’s picking.
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