It’s been years since Kit Willow has shown on the Sydney runway. Typically, she travels to Paris and presents her main season collections in a showroom there. But as we all know, it hasn’t been a typical 14 months. Willow launched Kitx as a sustainably-minded collection in 2016, choosing earth-friendly materials and messaging about the dangers of climate change. It took the pandemic for her to reorganize her operations around a pre-order model. The impetus was a shortage of material brought about by Australia’s lockdowns, but she saw the benefits in making only what consumers want, not what wholesale buyers anticipate they want.
Today’s collection is being offered directly to her clients. An email went out announcing “we produce what you buy, which reduces waste and is better for the planet.” The clothes on the runway affirm Willow’s commitment to the environment. In Australia, the raging wildfires of early 2020 were followed by epic rains in 2021, but it’s the oceans that she’s been most concerned about lately. The t-shirt in Look 1 resembles the famous movie poster for Jaws, only minus the oblivious swimming girl. “That’s because humans are the predators now, we’ve flipped the script,” Willow explained. There’s a seahorse tee, too; like sharks, they’re among the 37,400 animal species endangered and at risk of extinction.
Beyond the statement tees, a pair of denim looks were made entirely from scraps that Willow and her team sourced, washed, cut, and patchworked together like puzzles. She tapped the Melbourne milliner Melissa Jackson to make the similarly playful waste-denim hats that accessorized them. The curviform shapes of shells and other sea life informed the series of draped and knotted dresses that closed the show. With the breezy ease of beach sarongs, they have pre-order written all over them.
