BEAUTY: Clothing--Bethany Williams

Hello regular readers, London Fashion Week is underway and not only has COVID seemingly destroyed any semblance of what a Fashion Week is, but the seismic shifts in how brands and houses present and do business have also contributed to this loss. And finally, the thing that has been slowly moving toward all Men's Fashion Weeks like a glacier, the blending of menswear and womenswear, has also arrived to put another nail in the coffin. Indeed, at least half of the shows at London Fashion Week are exclusively womenswear collections. Many years ago when all the major Fashion Weeks introduced stand-alone, specific Weeks for brands to only show menswear, I was very excited. For so long, an interest in clothing had been something solely for women. Men were banished to bland business suits and weekendwear, with the world assuming that was all men did: go to work at an office and then come home on the weekend to mow the lawn. It was refreshing to have the industry turn toward us men who have a genuine interest in clothing as art. And I miss that. Oh, I do applaud the collections that are genederless and the scant few that present menswear and womenswear together, but for the most part, it feels like a huge step backward. And honestly, it feels a bit sexist.

Anyhow, there were only a handful of things at London Fashion Week that stood out to me so far...with only 2 days left to go.

Bethany Williams, the British Fashion Award-winning designer has been working with the idea of sustainability and philanthropy for a while now, and to create this genderless capsule collection of only nine coats and jackets for fabled London department store Selfridges, she sourced recycled blankets from Kempton market, Bermondsey car boot sales, and a trove of online vintage dealers. Each she found tells a story from the textile and weaving techniques, to the county, town or village it was made in. “A blanket is so much more than a piece of fabric,” says Williams. “It is a feeling of comfort and shelter and I wanted that feeling to be at the heart of this capsule collection.” The idea of comfort and shelter is quite apt as 20% of the profits will be donated to The Magpie Project, a Newnham-based charity that works with homeless children and mothers living in temporary or unstable accommodations. And that is a beautiful thing.

Each piece, cut for nearly one-size-fits-all, comes with a 100% organic cotton lining, sourced from Wales and handmade wooden buttons made by craftsman Spencer Martin from London Green Wood, a not for profit cooperative, using Hackney grown wood or waste wood from local tree surgeons. And as of this writing, there are only 3 pieces left at the on-line site for Selfridges...

https://www.bethany-williams.com/