two hands with orange colored bracelets holding a grey and blue ball shaped fabric

About Fashion Open Studio

Fashion Open Studio is Fashion Revolution’s showcasing initiative, launched in 2017. It is an event series which aims to celebrate the people and processes behind fashion. They work with emerging designers, established trailblazers and major players to promote industry transparency and longevity through simple, authentic narratives that resonate with consumers and creatives alike. The programme takes place both digitally and offline in physical events.

About the project

Fashion Open Studio and the British Council will present a series of studio events and workshops with nine international designers in response to the themes of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26. Launching at Digital Design Weekend at the V&A, during London Design Festival in September 2021, nine participating designers from across the world have been selected to open up their studios virtually to showcase their creative responses to fashion’s environmental impact and the climate talk themes of Adaptation and Resilience and Nature. The digital event series will take place between 25 September - 12 November, forming part of the British Council's The Climate Connection global programme. The event series will be animated by a physical activation in Glasgow during COP26 (1-12 November) which will offer the public and COP26 attendees alike an opportunity to interact with the open studio activities in person.

Digital Events and Platform

Turkish sustainable fashion brand Huner is focused on delivering material driven designs. On 30 September huner hosted a virtual event and opened up their studios virtually to showcase their creative response to fashion’s environmental impact and took their participants to a live tour at their studio to show how their materials are transformed into a huner tote bag. 

The digital event explored the way that Huner sources materials and their quest to use every piece of sail cloth they acquire, including the offcuts from their own production process.

Please visit here to watch the studio visit event. 

in the photo there is a woman sitting with a background of a garden. she is wearing a white shirt and pants and wearing a red necklace and three colored bag

Designers and Event Programme

Designers were nominated through the British Council and Fashion Revolution global networks. Proposals were scored against the Fashion Open Studio criteria and the relevance to the COP26 themes of Adaptation and Resilience and Nature.

The nine designers selected to take part are Garcia Bello (Argentina/Netherlands), Aranya Craft x Rahemur Rahman (Bangladesh/London), Iro Iro (India), Toton (Indonesia), Bora Studio (Nepal), Sindiso Khumalo (South Africa), Bhukram (Thailand), Huner (Turkey) and Vimbai Natasha Naomi (Zimbabwe).

Provisional digital event programme (times all UK):

25 September - 15.00 –Garcia Bello

30 September 16.00 –huner

7 October - 13.00 –Bhukram

14 October - 16.00 –VimbaiNatasha Naomi

21 October - 13.00 –Aranyax RahemurRahman

28 October - 16.00 –SindisoKhumalo

2 November - 13.00 –Iro Iro

4 November - 13.00 –Bora Studio

9 November - 13.00 –Toton

11 November -13.00 -SPEEDshare

Turkish sustainable fashion brand Huner is focused on delivering material driven designs and will be giving a studio tour and demo of the creation of a Huner bag. The event will mix pre filmed content showing the bag being made with live streaming from Huner’s Istanbul studio.

The digital event will explore the way that Huner sources materials and their quest to use every piece of sail cloth they acquire, including the offcuts from their own production process.

For more information about the designers and workshops please visit here.

British Council and Fashion Open Studio

Fashion Revolution have partnered with the British Council since 2017 on a variety of projects and initiatives including a series of policy dialogues, a professional skills toolkit and series of training events, a global study retreat and a set of creative commission projects with artists and creatives around the world. For COP26, our partnership will focus on Fashion Open Studio and building on this existing initiative to highlight the work of designers from around the world who are challenging the status quo of the industry and generating solutions to the harmful environmental impacts of the fashion industry.
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