At Thinking Hat we champion game changers, so in the spirit of LFW we’re spotlighting the fashion entrepreneurs and innovators in our network disrupting one of the oldest industries.
London Fashion Week returns this year in a physical-digital hybrid where dozens of designers will be showcasing their lines. While the event remains a major point in London’s calendar, there has been a tonal shift. Issues such as fast fashion, body diversity, racial and ethnic minority representation are more visible than ever before.
There has also been a ‘democratisation’ of fashion for young designers too, who have used their Instagram platforms to build their fashion houses and break into the industry, but there is still work to do.
Aurora James, founder of Brother Vellies fashion brand, and creator of AOC’s ‘TAX THE RICH’ Met Gala dress, has criticised the lack of representation of Black women designers worn at the Met Gala, an event synonymous with creative expression through your outfit.
With such lively discussion and fresh voices disrupting one of the oldest industries in the world, we started thinking about who is shaping these conversations in our network and inspiring us with their innovations:
Jonathan Kruger, Co-Founder of The Drop
The Drop are an innovative start-up making ‘laser cut’, made to measure suits online, in a sustainable and affordable way. We worked with founder CEO Jonathan Kruger and his team to drive business, news and fashion media coverage for The Drop whilst raising awareness of their sustainable approach.
Here’s what they had to say in our coverage secured with MinuteHack:
“The suit market in the UK is dominated by a few big high-street PLCs who are optimised for producing limited ranges in limited sizes in bulk. They have high overheads and a traditional retail model.
“It’s a very exciting time to be in the fashion industry for a business like ours. Consumer tastes are evolving – fit, quality and value for money are more important than ever before and sustainable manufacturing is increasingly important to them too.”
Read our case study for The Drop.
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Isabella Vrana, Depop Top10 Seller Worldwide
Isabella Vrana embodies much of the spirit of Gen Z’s approach to fashion and business. An interest in vintage clothes and re-using old materials, coupled with a canny ability for self-marketing on digital channel has led to her becoming a bestseller on Depop, where she now regularly features in the top ten sellers worldwide.
She now employs three people and sells her own ethically sourced designs through her burgeoning social media channels and website, all the while promoting sustainability and conscious consumption in fashion.
Fedro Gaudenzi and Sol Jaureguibeitia, Fedro Gaudenzi Bespoke
Although catering to a luxury audience, this bespoke fashion brand promotes inclusivity over exclusivity. Their ‘If you can think it, we can make it’ promise encourages unconstrained creative expression among their customers, standing in stark contrast to their more traditional (and sometimes stuffy) peers in Saville Row.
Their service also stands against fast fashion, with each piece producing zero-to-none material waste and garments made with the future in sight so they can be reworked and altered for decades to come.
They believe in keeping the heritage of traditional tailoring techniques alive while making them more accessible to younger, more diverse, and creative customers.
Fedro Gaudenzi, Founder and Creative Director said, “For us Bespoke is as much about the process as it is about the idea, and about never saying ‘no’ just because it hasn’t been done before.”
Daniel Silverstein, AKA Zero Waste Daniel
Another fashion entrepreneur we’ve loved watching grow is Zero Waste Daniel.
He’s a New York-based clothing designer who pioneers the zero-waste lifestyle through his clothing lines. An early innovator in reducing waste in fashion, his clothes use recycled materials from New York’s garment industry, reducing the clothes and garments sent to landfill.
The brand can even rescue the smallest scraps of material from landfill and turn these into their signature ‘3-d floral mosaics’, which essentially become wearable art!
“I don’t make work that hurts people, or oppresses people, that makes someone hate their body or their face, or that pollutes someone’s water.”
We hope you enjoyed our round-up of fashion innovators who are making us think, for more inspirational content you can read about our clients contributions to LGBT+ causes.
