It's World Environment Day (WED) and, while most public events may still be cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the digital space is a great place where to carry on raising awareness and debate about what we can do to tackle pollution, global warming and climate change.
Sustainable consumption in connection with the fashion industry is also another key theme that should be taken into consideration and, luckily, there are some graduates who have been focusing on this issue.
Kyra Buenviaje may have just graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RSID), but she seems to have already reached a certain level of maturity.
For her graduation she moved from her background: raised in Manila, she explored her Filipino heritage and developed a narrative around a specific character, a woman named Juana. This fictitious haciendera who lived during the Spanish colonisation of the Philippines between the 16th and the 19th century, turned into her graceful, strong and empowered muse with a unique wardrobe.
Buenviaje employed for her wardrobe just one fabric - denim - but she didn't buy any new textiles, she indeed acquired deadstock denim or recycled denim scraps and pants and repurposed them. The idea is certainly not new, but it is innovative the way the young designer settled onto creating with this recycled fabric, pieces inspired by own experiences and background, that are also strongly linked with the dramatic volumes and artisanal techniques that characterise high fashion. So, while Buenviaje didn't forget her background, she also combined it with other inspirations and ideas that she matured during her studies in other countries.
Buenviaje elevated therefore humble denim to Haute Couture coming up with a monumental layered ruffled cape, an architectural mille-feuille coat, a jacket with a three-dimensional floral motif created from circles made with Philippine peso coins and a top that opens up like the pages of a book and that actually features a print of pages selected from the Platinum karaoke books.
The most intriguing design is a couture gown made with rectangles of puffed up denim, each of them printed with an image replicating a packet of food or a bag of laundry detergent sold in sari-sari conveniences stores in Manila.
Denim is usually linked with workwear and, in Buenviaje's case, it is linked with hard-working Filipinos, but it is also reinvented in this collection in a dynamic way, through manipulation and density to provide something timeless and very personal as well.
The designer managed to come up with sustainable designs that have a soul and a story, something rare in the fashion industry (there are companies making sustainable clothes, but, most times, there isn't a story behind them).
Last but not least, while most designs made reusing denim are usually produced in factories with proper machines that can easily disassemble and cut fabrics, Buenviaje went for a total artisanal approach. If you check her Instagram page, you will indeed discover how she created her dress with interwoven strips of fabric starting from a pile of second-hand denim pieces.
A finalist at the MET Costume Institute College Fashion Design Competition and a scholarship winner for the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund Case Study Competition, Buenviaje will represent RISD at the Supima Design Competition this Autumn, but you can bet we will hear more about her in future.
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