In my humble opinion, it takes guts and determination in wanting to initiate a social and ecological change through fashion. And once in a while, a designer like Bethany Williams comes by and sweep me away with her overflowing passion and creativity for such causes. Williams believes that social and environmental issues go hand in hand and through exploring the connection between these issues we may find innovative design solutions to sustainability

We want not just to comment on a community, but work in their social spaces to try to create a change through furthering economic gain for charity. By using social capital, intellectual and labour intensive skills we aim to create a profit, which will be given to connected charities, continuing the cycle of exchange. Through collaboration with communities and charities we hope to create a collection embedded with real people and hope to cause a real effect in the social space we engage with. We provide an alternative system for fashion production, as we believe fashions’ reflection upon the world can create positive change.

In her latest collection titled ‘Breadline’, Bethany Williams particularly wants to highlight and help find solutions to the hidden hunger in the UK, specifically working along side the Vauxhall Food Bank and Tesco to achieve this. Williams developed an exchange of fresh fruit and vegetables (from Tesco) for waste items from the food banks users household. She also have developed a collection using these waste materials, plus recycled cardboard and ‘Tesco everyday value’ branded organic prints, all donated by Tesco. 30% of profits will then be donated to The Vauxhall food bank, continuing the cycle of exchange.

Through traditional hand crafted techniques and working with local craftmen/women, Williams have developed the surface of these waste materials to create hand crafted woven, printed, knitted and embroidered materials. The garments are 100% sustainable and made in the Uk down to the buttons which are hand crafted in the Lake District from her collaborators own planting of trees.

Williams also runs an art practice and fashion collection with a charitable message called Roofless. (which totally deserves a second blogpost from me)

Image Credits: showstudio.com