In a Masterclass with E.L.V. Denim’s founder, Anna Foster, Fashion&Business Saturday Club members from City of Oxford College, Activate Learning, created their own upcycled garments.
To kickstart the Masterclass, Anna introduced Club members to E.L.V. Denim’s principles of reducing their carbon footprint and supporting local communities. In a video, Club members watched Ross Barry, Managing Director of LMB & Co. Textile Recycling, talk through the process of sorting, grading and mechanically recycling unwanted garments for new lives.
Throughout their Masterclass introduction to sustainable denim, Anna shared key statistics with Club members, including that every two years there are approximately 8 billion pairs of jeans created, and that it takes 10,000 litres of water to make a new pair of jeans – the same amount of water one person drinks in 13 years. Anna also shared the ‘journey of the sustainable jean‘ with Club members, – detailing E.L.V.’s work with local East London ateliers and laundrettes. After exploring the processes surrounding sustainable fashion, Club members started work on their own creations using unwanted clothes brought from home. At the end of the Masterclass, each Club member presented their new item of clothing, which included mismatched shirts, suit-jeans, material belts, and sleeves repurposed as trouser legs.