65Fashion firstPHOTOGRAPH BY KRIS ATOMIC
Inher regular column on trying to dress b ter – in an actual ethical kind of way –
f ion features directorJess W dtalks winning wool and global goalsTHINKING FASHION...CameronSaul, that is. The
dynamic founder of bag brand
Bottletop (and son of Mulberry
legendRoger Saul) is on a
missionto do good, both with
his bags and the campaign
Together Band. And the cred
runs deep – who else could
turn used, discarded ring
pulls into A-list accessories?He founded the
labelas a ‘business
arm’ of the Bottletop
Foundation,
which supports
disadvantaged
young people in
the favelas of Brazil (as well
as in Africa and the UK).
Now, with a new Regent Street
store and amazing designs
for AW19, like the ‘Margot’ in
Berry, £345 (right), the brand
is going from strength to
strength. Meanwhile, Saul’s
Together Band campaign,
created to highlight the UN’s17 sustainable development
goalsset out in 2015, offers up
a band for every goal: you get
two in each box – wear one;
give the other to a friend to
spread the message. The
bands are handmade in Nepal
from upcycled ocean plastics
(each band removes 1kg of
waste), while the clasps are
made from decommissioned
illegal firearms. All proceeds go
to projects that support the UN
goals, so we’re snapping up the
yellow version, from £20 (right)
to support goal 12: ‘Responsible
Consumption and Production’.This month, I’m adopting a
sheep. No, Maisie won’t be
roaming the streets of London’s
Kensal Rise looking for grazing
opps (she’d have a
job). She lives in New
Zealand – home to
the world’s finest
quality merino – and provides wool for the
super cool sweaters of Sheep Inc, fashion’s
first ‘carbon-negative’ brand. Founder
Edzard van der Wyck, the brains behind
seamless hosiery label, Heist, explains,
‘There’s a lot of talk about being carbon
neutral, but we’re passed the point where
that’s enough. That should be the bare
minimum for a brand. For every product
we sell, Sheep Inc takes ten times more CO2
out of the atmosphere than the product puts
in.’ How? Well, £10 from the cost of each
sweater is used to ‘adopt’ a sheep. That
money goes to a raft of biodiversity projects- World Land Trust reforestation and forest
protection schemes, for instance – as
recommended by a panel of climate-change
BETTER CALL SAUL...specialists who advise the brand. So, what gave van der Wyck
theidea for furry friend adoption in the first place? ‘I wanted
a new way to get people to really care where products come
from by making them an emotionally invested part of
the process,’ he says. As a result, each
sweater comes with a tag embedded
with a QR code that you can scan to get
sheepupdates. ‘It’s a real animal; we can
tell you it’s just had lambs,’ he adds.
Evenwithout the cuteness factor, the
sweaters themselves stack up: made on
3D Japanese knitting machines from
ultra-fine(19.5 micron) merino, there’s
oneperfect round-neck style available
in five colours. Each is hand finished
with different shades of off-cut yarn,
usedto create a mark in the back of the
sweaterinspired by the ‘Smith mark’
put on to sheep. Anyway, I’m off to see
what kind of day Maisie has had...