A Fashion System of One’s Own
The fashion photographs accompanying this interview were shot by Ruth Ossai. They show Bethany Williams’s spring/summer 2021 collection, All Our Children.
As a new display of Bethany Williams’s work opens at London’s Design Museum, we revisit our interview with the designer from 2020 about working in fashion during lockdown.
The interview took place over phone in September 2020, and was conducted by Ligaya Salazar, director and curator of the Fashion Space Gallery and the London College of Fashion Arts Programme. Bethany Williams is a London-based designer who trained in fine art at the University of Brighton, before studying menswear fashion design at the London College of Fashion. Since establishing her eponymous label in 2017, Williams has developed all of her collections in conjunction with social enterprises and charities, highlighting issues such as food poverty and youth homelessness. Williams also produces her garments in partnership with making programmes at, among others, HM Prison Downview and the San Patrignano drug rehabilitation programme in Rimini, Italy. She is the recipient of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design and won the 2020 Social Innovation: The Material Evolution Arts Foundation Futures Award.
Ligaya Salazar This has been a crazy year in so many different ways – how has it been for you and how have you adjusted to the new situation?
Bethany Williams When lockdown began, we thought, “Are we going to have orders cancelled? How are we going to survive? Is there going to be any work?” That was scary and, of course, there were also the community projects we work with which we wanted to keep on checking in with. It’s obviously been a horrible time, but several months on I’ve found that staying grounded in one place has actually been beneficial for me and my mind, and generally for our business as well. Before lockdown, I was doing a lot of traveling for work – I was away for the whole of February, for instance, and was only here for four days during January, during which time we had to turn around a project to take to the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair in January – an installation for an exhibition by Machine-A using deadstock denim. So, in a way, it’s been nice to have time to think about what I want to do. Before now, I’ve felt like I was on a treadmill and didn’t have much control over what I was taking on.
Ligaya Have you been taking on projects during this period in lockdown?
Bethany We’re still spinning a lot of plates, but there are now fewer commitments in terms of traveling and speaking engagements. We are, however, launching a new collection that has been commissioned by Somerset House and made in collaboration with the Magpie Project in Newham, a charity supporting mothers with children under five, who are living in temporary or insecure accommodation. We were meant to be launching that in mid-September, along with an exhibition, but because of the UK’s new “Rule of Six” legislation [which came into force on 14 September 2020 and banned social gatherings of more than six people, ed.], we aren’t able to do it. The idea had been to bring community projects to Somerset House for the launch, but with the new rule I just don’t feel comfortable bringing those community groups onsite, and I didn’t feel comfortable putting on the exhibition without the community being able to see it. So we’re postponing it.
Ligaya Can you tell me what we can expect from that new collection?
Bethany It’s a smaller number of looks – 11 in total, as well as some childrenswear which are miniature versions of the larger looks. We’ve also made some accessories. That collection is going to be called “All of Our Children”, because “Our children” is a term that a lot of the mothers involved with the Magpie Project would have heard from the local council. When they ask the council for help, they’re often told: “These aren’t our children, they don’t belong to the borough, they don’t belong to the UK.” So Jane Williams, the founder of the Magpie Project, and I wanted to talk about collective responsibility for the next generation, and especially the most vulnerable within our society. Given this horrible situation we’re in, I think we all need to be carving out a little bit of hope and light. But it’s been strange doing that from my living room. It’s been tough.
Ligaya With the kind of projects you do, it’s in-person, real-life encounters that are really important to your design. How have you worked with your collaborators during this time?
Bethany The Magpie Project set up a WhatsApp group for anyone who uses the service, so we’ve been using that to send out a series of digital workshops that we’ve filmed. They’ve developed a digital network through which people were sending out food, prams and nappies, and we’ve been using that to send out creative kits through the trust’s volunteers: we put together a flag-making kit, for instance, as well as craft bags, which we’ve worked with the illustrator Melissa Kitty-Jarram on. Melissa also did a drawing video, which we sent out to all the mums and minis [the name that the Magpie Project gives to the mothers and children who use the service, ed.] so they can draw together. In general, WhatsApp has been good because it has allowed us to keep having creative conversations that aren’t via email.
“We all need to be carving out a little bit of hope and light.”
Ligaya How do you come up with the concept for a collection and then roll that out through the different connections you have – community organisations, poets, and musicians?
Bethany Well, on the manufacturing and making side of things, those collaborations never change. For example, to produce the garmentswework with Making for Change, a partnership between HMP Downview and the London College of Fashion, as well as the Manx Workshop for the Disabled, which is on the Isle of Man, where I’m from. Those stay consistent, but the themes and projects change. We’ll research an issue in the UK that we’re interested in, find a professional partner who provides solutions within that specific area, and then we’ll work alongside them. That includes introducing them to production partners, as well as helping to fundraise. We donate 20 per cent of proceeds from the collection to the partnering organisation, but we also volunteer and work with them to try and understand what they’re all about. For instance, with Jane at Magpie it’s been all about understanding what she wants to communicate – that way, we can share our media spotlight to portray the message she feels is most important. We try to do the same thing through the collection itself: through the print design, or the storytelling. I think it’s really just about bringing incredible people into the same space, and letting those people do what they do best.
Ligaya What does working with you and your team mean to those charities and communities? Have you had any feedback from them about how those collaborations affect their view on things?
Bethany When working with the Magpie Project, we have had to be super mindful. You need to tread carefully and be respectful. That’s Jane’s space, which she has created to be a safe space for the mums and minis – her first port of call is to make sure that they’re looked after and happy. So it’s really about having a conversation around what she’d like to say through a collection, and what she and the mums would want to communicate. How can we help support that? To answer that question is a matter of asking questions and listening. With Jane it has been such an amazing experience because she’s a wonderful person and so open to collaboration – she’s very much a part of the creative process. It’s about being open and respectful.
Ligaya One of the other organisations you work regularly with is San Patrignano [SanPa] in Italy.
Bethany SanPa is a not-for-profit drug rehabilitation facility. It was set up about 50 years ago and it has grown dramatically, so there are now about 1,200 to 1,300 people living there at any one time. It’s a free three-year programme, so one of the longest in the world, but it has been very successful with at least a 70 per cent recovery rate. They have a belief that craft has healing properties and operate 50 different sectors of making, ranging from a film department, graphics department and leatherworking, through to hand weaving, hand-painting wallpaper and wine cultivation. When you enter the programme, you’re put into one of those craft sectors and that’s where you then work, so it’s about establishing routine. We work with the women in the handwoven textile department, where they produce fabrics from recycled materials. We’ll usually go out and sample with them, and I’ll stay for five or six days to work there and participate in the community. I think if it was just about substance misuse, people would leave within a couple of months, but it’s deeper than that. It’s about community and the way that you live and work. I’ve been working with them now for over three years, so I’ve seen people complete the project and leave, which has been amazing. To see that kind of progress is incredible and the work they produce is of such a high quality. It’s a very special place.
“They have a belief that craft has healing
properties.”
Ligaya What do people end up doing when they eventually leave SanPa?
Bethany It depends. They may want to stay closer to SanPa, or they may want to go home. They’ve actually set up a plan to help the women, so they can leave for two weeks to see if it’s right for them and, if it’s not, they can come back into the community and SanPa can help set them up a place to live, a job, and some security. I think that’s why it’s so successful: it helps you create a support network, at the very least. So some of the girls can choose to stay and work, while others can go on to work in the textile industry.
Ligaya Collectivity and collective futures seem to run through your ethos and approach towards design. During the lockdown, you set up the Emergency Designer Network with a few other designers to produce medical scrubs and robes, for instance. How did that come about and will it continue beyond lockdown?
Bethany It’s continuing. During lockdown, Phoebe English, Holly Fulton, Cozette McCreery and I were all receiving requests from NHS workers for PPE and surgical scrubs. We were receiving these requests, but we’re such tiny studios – like, what’s going on here? So we started chatting to each other, and Holly had a connection with the Royal Free Hospital in London. We really felt like we should be doing something and applied to the government to be one of its suppliers, but that process was going to take so long. So we ended up working with the Royal Free directly. We got a pair of their scrubs and Phoebe’s pattern-cutter made the pattern from that. I found NHS-certified materials in the UK, and then we found a cutting facility in Nottingham. The ribbing and all sorts of things like that were donated from local manufacturers and designers. We thought we were only going to be doing it with 10 designers, but we ended up with 150 makers!
Ligaya What kind of makers did you attract?
Bethany Everything from big manufacturers producing 2,000 to 4,000 units down to home makers – we didn’t want to discriminate. We have now been connected to networks which have become our distribution and courier services, so we send packs with all the materials directly to the home makers – the materials, the webbing, the patterns, everything already cut, so that they can make the scrubs quickly. For larger manufacturers, we would just send them the cloth. Everything from the makers would then be delivered to washers, before being delivered to the 40 or so NHS trusts we’re working with. We’d also distribute PPE to people who couldn’t get it through NHS trusts or the government – care homes, for instance. We partnered with Dazed Media to distribute 50,000 masks, [with recipients including] the Black Lives Matter protests and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Most surgical gowns are non-reusable, and particularly during the pandemic hospitals haven’t had sufficient laundry facilities to clean them anyway. But we wanted to create a reusable product that we could leave to the NHS as a kind of legacy. We are now starting to produce reusable gowns with the British supplier Voltex, and we’ve just sent samples of these to the Royal Free to check and approve. I think it’s really important to have products that are being manufactured in the UK, because if our borders are suddenly shut we’re still going to need to be able to access PPE.
Ligaya It’s great that you’re slowly building circularity into the project, because I wanted to ask you about sustainability – it’s a complicated term, but what do you think it takes to be sustainable in fashion?
Bethany It’s a difficult question. We get bracketed under that term, but I actually find it problematic. It’s such a big word, which can be used to describe so many different processes and philosophies, but we’re all learning and no-one has all the answers. I do, however, think it’s important to research as much as you can and have your own viewpoint as a designer. In my case, I didn’t want to just be thinking about the environment, because what’s really important is the connection between people and the environment. A lot of people are being affected by the climate crisis, particularly those at the bottom end of the income bracket. Those connections mean it’s important to consider the social and environmental aspects of fashion production together. For me, the most sustainable thing would probably be if I didn’t make any clothes at all, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last three years. We’re making recycled and organic clothing, and doing that in the form of social projects, but is even that sustainable? Should we stop making clothes and stop working with all of the projects that we do? Having said that, I also feel that sometimes you have to be a part of the problem to find a solution, and you can’t forget that fashion employs one in six people on the planet.
Ligaya Your way of working is quite unique in the fashion world, however, and I was interested to hear that you studied fine art before fashion. What impact did that have on how you think about fashion?
Bethany I love textiles and that’s my passion within fashion – taking something discarded and giving it time and craftsmanship. During my art foundation I was already interested in textiles, as well as fine art and photography, but I really didn’t want to go into fashion. I found the whole industry problematic – the waste, for one thing, but perhaps also the fact that it has a bad reputation, generally. So I studied fine art before ending up working for a fashion art publication called Garage, but on the art rather than the fashion side. As part of that, we were doing collaborative projects between artists and fashion designers, which I found interesting and inspiring to be able to work between those two industries. At the same time I was also volunteering at a soup kitchen in Brighton and doing a documentary for a charity. I was looking at how art had the ability to cause an effect outside of itself and reading a lot into the likes of SUPERFLEX – art collectives which had infiltrated multinational companies or government bodies to get funding they could then use to benefit community projects. I just thought, “Is there a way to connect the projects I work on with the fashion community?” That’s how I started, but the critical thinking component of my fine art degree was so important – just asking the question of why you’re producing something. If you were to make something on the course, you had to really justify it and have a proper understanding of that. Translating that into a fashion context is super important. Why are you making that? Who does it benefit? Who’s made it?
Ligaya It’s almost as if you’ve created your own fashion system before entering the “real” fashion system. That’s quite a brave step, because there are so many ingrained mechanisms within that industry. What do you think of seasons, for instance? Will we still have seasons in the years to come, or is there a whole different way of creating, making, and selling?
Bethany Well, our collections are project-based, but we do try and release them around the right time to sell. So we try and release in June for the menswear schedule to get the right buy-in time with stores. But I think that may be going out the window – you can release a project when you want to release it, when it’s ready, and not put too much pressure on yourself. What had been happening in the last three years has been really sped up by the pandemic. The seasons didn’t make sense, anyway, given that you have different temperatures all over the world at different times. Working in a project-based way works for me.
“ I love textiles and that’s my passion within fashion – taking something discarded and giving it time and craftsmanship.”
Ligaya The way in which seasonal fashion shows have been run during the pandemic, and who has and hasn’t been showing, has been interesting. What would your ideal future of making clothes and garments look like?
Bethany To me, it’s working with social manufacturing projects and developing those together with partners. We’ve worked really closely with Making for Change and SanPa for years, so I feel like we’ve got such a strong relationship with them. It’s been interesting with the pandemic to see that they are getting busier with other projects too. Smaller artisan projects seem to be getting loads of work, while larger manufacturers are struggling. I don’t want to have a massive wholesale business and I don’t think that works for us. It’s nice to work with a select group of retailers and then do one-off projects and collaborations. I’d like to work more as an artist than a fashion designer and that’s the next phase – take the critical thinking and apply that to larger organisations and projects. I’m not scared to work with larger organisations and use our methodology to try and help them create their own systems. We have a small impact, but if we had the budgets of larger corporations, it would help us do authentic projects while still keeping our small production going at the same time.
Words Ligaya Salazar
This article was originally published in Disegno #27. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.
Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems opens at London’s Design Museum today.