Australia recently emerged from a months-long lockdown. “It’s been another year of challenges,” reported Kit Willow from her home in Melbourne. “No travel, all the shops are closed, and we were homeschooling.” You can’t say Willow hasn’t made the best of it, though.
Her brand Kitx is built on sustainable principles. Principles and practices are not always one and the same, as a quick Google search on the subject of greenwashing will elucidate. But post-lockdown Willow’s are better aligned than most. In June, during an abbreviated Sydney Fashion Week she announced a new pre-order strategy. “We produce what you buy, which reduces waste and is better for the planet,” she told her followers.
In between then and now, as an industry used to moving at warp speed has been stymied by labor shortages and freight issues, Willow has set up a Future From Waste Lab. At the Melbourne facility, landfilled denim is sorted, washed, hung to dry, and cut open, and then resewn, photographed, and sold, or packaged and shipped. “The entire process is transparent in one location,” she said.
Willow was approached by the Australian property development company Beulah and asked to envision the future of retail. “All I know is that we have an enormous waste problem,” she explained. “If we can create a transparent environment where you see the waste arrive and see the production process and either sell it or ship it out, that to me feels like the future of retail.” Even better, she’s sharing the facility with other Australian companies who make different garments. T-shirts, say. “Kitx is pedaling, pedaling, pedaling, but for real change going forward we need it to happen across the industry.”
The denim pieces in her new collection were all made from upcycled material at the Future From Waste Lab. Otherwise, and in keeping with her sustainability practice, Willow started researching the possibilities of mycelium. There’s no mushroom leather, but mushrooms make appearances in the form of a digital print on dresses in silk or wool jersey, and as tops hand-crocheted with organic cotton to resemble the frilly, lace-like skirts of a veiled lady, one of which stars on a t-shirt.
Willow said she’s considering presenting her collection in Paris next March, as she used to pre-COVID, but she’s skeptical about rushing back to business as usual. “Do we want normal?” she asked. Willow doesn’t, and she’s doing something about it.
