Festivals To Fashion. -Repurposing Camping Waste.

My primary approach to the challenges fashion presents today, is to repurpose old to new, based on the three main principles of sustainability: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.

Secondly, I am an avid problem solver, particularly motivated when there is a greater purpose and good to the problem I’m looking to solve. In short, I don’t want to be adding to a problem, I want to be part of a solution.

Sustainability requires greater step-changes in attitude to a by gone era where items of clothing were considered valuable items with lifelong purpose and to serve multiple generations in many cases via hand-me-downs. The idea to use discarded festival tents was down to my personal experiences of attending a local festival since my early teens - I saw first-hand the amount of tents and camping material left behind each year. In addition to the festival waste, living close to the Lake District waters, I often see tents left up in the fells and down at the waters edge after tourists decided they no longer want them.

These experiences are what lead me to begin looking for ways I could be part of the solution to a problem I saw on my own doorstep. With any challenge it’s good to find the fun in a solution and the challenge of trying to make clothes, particularly outdoor clothing that performs functionally, only added to the design pleasure.

Tents and camping equipment are interesting, they often have many quirky but interesting elements to them - whether the bespoke material itself, or the seams, clips, zips, ropes, and fibreglass poles - which provide interesting challenges from which to create new products.

Each year I learn more about my customers and what is important to them, but primarily they are likeminded people who share a passion to help the environment any way they can, and through a love of something different. My clothing is purposefully gender neutral and each item is unique in its own right. The nature of my supply chain means I don’t know the base materials I’ll be working with on any new project, a creative response which continues to feed my enthusiasm.

Molly Sellars

Molly Sellars is a designer and maker creating bespoke functional outerwear and accessories from repurposed festival waste! Based in the Lake District, UK.