The death of the fashion calendar has arrived, brands and designers including Chloé, Dries van Noten and Tory Burch have signed a petition to overhaul the seasonal traditions. Brands have decided it’s time to put an end to constant sales and overproduction.
In January fashion brand Room for Moon opened its first pop up store in Covent Garden. A beautifully decorated setting with oranges carefully placed on tables and tulips lying on cotton fabric as you enter. Room for Moon is a sustainable brand handmade in London by Yun and her seamstress. After studying at London College of Fashion Yun founded Room for Moon intending to make a fashion brand that doesn’t cost the earth. She invented her calendar which she calls All Year Around Collection (A.Y.A). This consists of one annual collection, a few capsule collections, and collaborations with creatives to produce other mediums of work such as exhibitions and films.
I asked Yun about A.Y.A and how she positions herself in the industry, Yun says:
‘I don’t want to call my brand a fashion brand, I want some kind of a platform but based in fashion. There will be collaboration collections with artists who are concerned about the environment, the Earth, and people because art creates a lot of waste. It’s a platform for people to think about and discuss how we can enjoy our lives more sustainably. There is one collaboration in September, I have a friend who is a fine artist who does installation art. I’m going to make a textile piece and then there will be an exhibition and that’s it, that’s the collection. I will then document every step of the process and make a photo book.’
‘I don’t want to call my brand a fashion brand, I want some kind of a platform but based in fashion.’
Yun
Room for Moon Covent Garden Pop-up
She continues to say:
‘I want to ignore the structure of how fashion brands should look like, we need to have spring-summer, we need to have autumn-winter. When I was planning the brand I thought you know what, I want to forget what fashion looks like, I just want to do what I want to do. This is necessary for sustainable fashion.’
Room for Moon’s 2020 AYA collection includes a neutral palette of classic wardrobe pieces with a modern edge. The brand focuses on items you can wear every day and use natural fabrics. Yun ensures that she minimises waste at every stage of her process and tries to use a few people in between to get to the final product. She is fortunate to have a friend who connected her to her current seamstress. Without this, she admits that studios and companies who produce samples are extremely expensive. Although Yun studied at LCF, her course only provided her with the basic tools to develop patterns, a lot of the skill she developed independently.
‘When I was planning the brand I thought you know what, I want to forget what fashion looks like, I just want to do what I want to do. This is necessary for sustainable fashion.’
Yun
Yun: ‘The fabrics are expensive, but we price them based on the steps. I don’t hire people; I produce all the clothes myself. Most of the fabric is from Lithuania and the certified cotton is from Germany, the hemp silk is from America and the denim is from India. My brand has a main colour which is ivory and then for each collection, it changes colour, our brand’s main colour is cobalt blue. We produce bags and teddy bears with the scraps from our collection so we don’t have to throw away anything.’
She continues to speak about how she keeps packaging minimal:
‘I don’t think I need to have packaging which is printed with brand logos etc. I ordered compostable packaging which doesn’t have my brand name on it. It’s these things that are not necessary. If they try to produce the customised labels and packages, they always need to test a few first, so they have a lot of faulty items that they throw away. If I buy something that is already made then I’m not producing extra waste.’
‘The fabrics are expensive, but we price them based on the steps. I don’t hire people; I produce all the clothes myself. Most of the fabric is from Lithuania and the certified cotton is from Germany, the hemp silk is from America and the denim is from India.’
Yun
Room for Moon see’s sustainability as a way of living. ‘ I think people will join in, not only the fashion industry but the whole world’ says Yun. It took a global pandemic but the fashion world is finally realising that it no longer has to be a slave to a system. Creating a unique calendar around your brand is an opportunity to keep your audience engaged and work at a pace that suits your individual needs.
