Financial Times Europe - 02.11.2019 - 03.11.2019

6 ★ FT Weekend 2 November/3 November 2019

E

very two years, people go for

an eye test and their prescrip-

tion changes and they chuck

away their old frames and get

n e w o n e s ,” s a y s To m

Broughton, founder of the London-

based eyewear brand Cubitts. “Most

glasses are made from cellulose acetate,

so even though it’s not plastic it’s not

from Mother Earth and doesn’t biode-

grade. We’ve been looking for an alter-

native to acetate.”

Waste not, want not, so the age-old

adage goes. It’s certainly true for

Broughton, who recently unveiled a 10-

piece collection of opticals and sun-

glasses crafted from waste materials

including corn husks and mushrooms in

a bid to reduce his brand’s impact on the

planet. Due to appear in stores in Janu-

ary, the Cubitts Redux line includes

chunky round spectacles with a corru-

gated surface that look a bit like they

could be crafted from wood (they’re

actually made from corn starch), and

rectangular frames with a textured mid-

brown finish that are derived from pota-

toes and old coffee grounds. “The pota-

toes come from a company that works

with McCain’s chip offcuts,” he says.

Single-use plastics and discarded fish-

ing nets were among the first materials

to be recycled into luxury products, but

now food waste is getting the sustaina-

ble spin. US designer Mara Hoffman

crafts all her buttons from tree nuts,

while Hugo Boss and Veja sell sneakers

made from repurposed pineapple leaves

and corn starch, and Italian start-up

Orange Fiber makes silk from scraps of

citrus peel which has been usedfor Sal-

vatore Ferragamo’s slinky floral printed

scarves and dresses.

Stella McCartney, who has long been a

champion of sustainable alternative

fabrics, has recently partnered with Bolt

Threads, a Californian company that

was last year valued at $700m nda

dining to beauty and fashion. “Food

waste is definitely trending right now,”

says Lisa Carolan, founder of the first

waste-free wellness resort Our Retreat,

in Sardinia; she introduced a waste-free

policy after discovering that 1.3bntons

of food is wasted annually. (The figure is

expected to rise to 2.2bn y 2025,b

according to the United Nations.) From

upwards of £1,450, guests can enjoy six

days of mindfulness, meditation and

day trips out to sea on a private yacht,

accompanied by lunches that use up

leftovers from the night before. “Carrot

salads are made into vegan cakes, avo-

cado is blitzed into guacamole, leftover

raw cauliflower salad can be made into

pizza base,” says Carolan. “We’ve had a

positive response from our guests.”

Clos19’s supper clubs — and Cubitts’

glasses — salvage what would “other-

wise go in the dustbin,” says Clos 19’s

founder Stéphanie Watine Arnault. She

adds, “I was horrified when I learnt the

statistics that one-third of the food

grown or produced in the world is dis-

carded.” She says her luxury supper

clubs help to change people’s attitudes

around waste by turning it into meals

made by Michelin-starred chefs. “We

work with suppliers [to source food]

which can’t be sold — this can be as sim-

ple as incorrect size, shape or cut,” she

says. “For me, these supper clubs show

that with a little more thought we can all

minimise how much we trash.”

The growing demand for natural skin-

care and plastic-free packaging has seen

the beauty industry wake up to waste

too. Earlier this year, The Body Shop

unveiled a collection of cleansers and

moisturisers crafted from organic,

wonky carrots that are too crooked to

sell in supermarkets. Cowshed’s packag-

ing is made from repurposed sugar

cane, while London-based brands

UpCircle and MontaMonta have both

partnered with coffee shops across the

British capital to turn used coffee

grounds into scrubs and serums that are

Last season in menswear saw the

reinvention of the cross-

body utility bag; now,

luxury brands and

designers are returning

to a timeless silhouette

for winter — the tote.

Whether you like loudly

patterned shoppers or

prefer a sturdy canvas style,

it has been given a chic —

and practical — reboot and there

are plenty to choose from.

1. or those who don’t shyF
   away from pattern and colour,
   look to Burberry. Its
   Artle vintage-check
   tote bag takes
   inspiration from the
   house’s 1960s archives.
   Created with a cotton-
   blend canvas, it has a
   handy detachable
   shoulder strap (£590,
   matchesfashion.com).


2. Outerwear brand Folk has
   also gone bold. Its
   monotone shopper is
   patterned with up-and-
   coming artist Mr Alfie
   Kungu’s abstract prints
   and is perfect for
   everyday (£55,
   mrporter.com).


3. ounded in 2013,F

Style

ou wearY

sold at Cult Beauty and Liberty. Coffee is

rich in antioxidants, and the caffeine is

said to also boost collagen production.

The grounds are readily available —

according to Allegra World Coffee Por-

tal, analysts of the global sector, the UK

coffee trade was worth £10.1bn in 2018,

with independent outlets serving 10.5m

cups of coffee per week.

“The supply of the material is plenti-

ful,” says Broughton, of his potato

glasses — one of his most

successful product trials

based on its likeness to

acetate in terms of dura-

bility and mouldability.

“Particularly in this coun-

try, we eat a lot of chips.

Chips Board, the clever

company we work with,

take the stuff that’s too

small to constitute a chip by

McCain’s standards and turn it

into board using heat and pressure,” he

says. Helmed by four recent graduates,

the London-based start-up company

normally make the boards for computer

processors. “On its own, the mate-

rial looks nice-ish,”

h e s a y s. “ Yo u

wouldn’t say it was

beautiful, but you

wouldn’t think it

looks like pota-

toes either. We

experimented with

other materials to make it look more

interesting — we sprinkled coffee

grounds into it which made it a bit more

prismatic and to give texture. He adds,

“the appearance is really important,

because there’s no point making some-

thing from an alternative material like

mushrooms if no one wants to wear it.”

Using food waste in fashion has its

downsides, though. Broughton’s mush-

room glasses didn’t pass the brand’s

standards testing; the material —

called mycelium, which is also used in

vegan leathers — proved too flimsy and

Troubadour’s bags are a best

seller. “We have seen a

massive rise in the

sale of men’s

totes,” says co-

founder Samuel

Bail. “Our creative

director Samantha

Jacob pushed the

team to create a

tote in 2017 and it

literally became our bestselling

style on the day it launched.” Its

most popular version? “The

Adventure tote,” says Bail.

“It has snaps to

keep it closed and

expand the

capacity... The bag

is made from only

two pieces of fabric

so there are no

seams at the front,

giving it a refined look.”

(£225, troubadourgoods.com)

4. Constantly rummaging

for work key cards

and other

miscellaneous

items at the

bottom of your

bag? Well search

no more, thanks

to Trunk x

Porter’s collaboration tote.

Made from cotton canvas with

vegetable-tanned leather trims,

this smart bag has a series of

waterproof compartments

for pens, wallets and small

everyday essentials. The

canvas has also been treated

with wax for water resistance.

Neat. (£130,

trunkclothiers.com).

5. ult Japanese labelC
   Ichizawa Hanpu also prefers to keep
   things simple; its shopper bags
   (made in Kyoto and available in
   myriad colours) are crafted
   from hard-wearing 8oz cotton
   canvas and feature an internal
   zip pocket to keep your
   everyday essentials organised.
   (£125, trunkclothiers.com)


6. If you appreciate graphic
   design, opt for Italian luxury
   brand Valentino’s collaboration
   with Japanese label Undercover.
   Although the brands are perhaps an
   unlikely pairing, the shopper is sleek
   and built to last. Crafted from
   Italian black nappa leather
   with two thick straps and a
   funky UFO print in lilac, it can
   easily translate from day to
   night. Plus it’s large enough to
   fit a 13” Apple Macbook Pro in.
   (£919, endclothing.com)
   Flora Macdonald Johnston

SHOPPING

MEN ’S TOTE S

impractical. Similarly, Veja’s leather-

look material crafted from corn waste

was originally used in its sleek Campo

tennis trainer, but had to be switched

to its signature V10 basketball sneaker

after the designers realised the process

of meshing it to the vulcanised sole was

damaging the fibre. “It has to spend an

hour and 10 minutes in the oven at

200 degrees to glue the sole to the

upper,” says co-founder Sébastien

Kopp. “We’ve had to switch it to a shoe

that stitches the sole on instead — we

can only use it for sewn shoes. It was a

bitter learning curve.”

In recent years, as the fashion indus-

try has started to acknowledge the

impact of garment production on the

planet (being the second most polluting

industry after oil), sustainability has

become something of a buzzword.

“There’s a lot of greenwashing around

right now,” says Broughton. Fashion’s

overuse of ‘sustainable’ and ‘ethical’ as

blanket terms has, he argues, made both

lose meaning with consumers because

the details regarding production remain

abstract. “It’s much more nuanced than

that,” Broughton adds.

Waste, on the other hand, is a new

term being championed by numerous

brands — it’s more specific and direct

when used as a marketing tool. “Circula-

tory doesn’t have that same pull with

customers,” says Broughton, “whereas

waste does because they can visualise it.

That’s one of the reasons that plastic has

played into our minds and hearts,

because people have all these visual

images of non-biodegradable plastics

floating in the ocean and turtles swim-

ming in it. People just think food is bio-

degradable and goes back into the earth,

but they’re not thinking of the impact

the production of it has had.” The word

waste, argues Broughton, is a new way of

repackaging the sustainability message

in a way customers can understand.

“We opted to see the value in waste,

rather than the waste in it,” says Mike

Schlebach, co-founder of the South Afri-

can label Sealand — it’s just one

of a number of labels to adopt

the term into its key market-

ing messaging. Other brands

and businesses to utilise the

waste-free catchphrase

include London-based ELV

Denim — which repurposes

old jeans in its designs — and

Kering’s Worn Again Tech-

nologies, which breaks down

used materials to make new ones.

While Sealand doesn’t use food waste, it

does use old yacht sails that would oth-

erwise end up in a landfill, turning them

into backpacks and tote bagsstocked on

Mr Porter. “Waste [as a luxury term] is

being reconsidered,” he says. “We’re

intercepting it prior to landfill —

we’re proud to cham-

pion it.”

B r o u g h t o n

thinks the way to

g e t c u s t o m e r s

rethinking waste — and

its value — is literally to transform it in

front of their eyes. “We want someone to

be able to bring in their old plastic bags

or other waste from home, put them

into a shredder that turns them into pel-

lets, and those pellets can be turned into

frames to make your own glasses,” he

says. He says the brand isn’t far off intro-

ducing such tech to stores.

“We want to emphasise that our own

trash can also become our own treas-

ure,” says Watine Arnault. “We all have

a responsibility to reconsider our atti-

tude to waste.”

hat you eatw

makes buttery vegan leathers out of

mushrooms. For spring/summer 2019,

McCartney offered gauzy vests and

T-shirts crafted from vegan silk made

from yeast, and leather trousers in

earthy mustards and burgundy hues.

Meanwhile, LVMH’s wine and spirits

platform Clos19 has teamed up with

London charity Refettorio Felix to host

supper clubs where stellar chefs such as

Skye Gyngell serve up three-course din-

ners using only waste produce — tickets

cost £90, and each event sells out almost

instantly. It’s a movement happening

across different lifestyle categories from

Beauty brands partner

with local coffee shops to

turn waste grounds into

scrubs and serums

Clockwise from main: Stella

McCartney AW17 campaign;

MontaMonta sage and

coffee scrub, £17,

libertylondon.com; Pinatex

sneakers, £219, Hugo Boss;

Cubitts Redux potato glasses,

available from January;

LVMH’s Clos 19 waste supper

club, hosted at Refettorio

Felix in London; Stella

McCartney SS19

Sustainability Corn, mushrooms|

and even potatoes are being converted

into luxury items.GraceCook eportsr

on the rebranding of food waste

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NOVEMBER 2 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 31/10/2019- 17:37 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD6, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 6, 1