Vintage silks and sarees given a new fashion twist in Scotland

The quality of the workmanship, the classic designs and the ‘too good to throw away’ fabrics – many far older that her – told a story of having once taken pride of place in their owners’ clothes collection.

Back home, she focused her creative skills on finding new ways to use exotic vintage textiles for a new generation seeking an antidote to a wasteful world of fast fashion.

A few months later her new fashion brand, Thread Again, which takes vintage Indian silks and patterned fabrics with exquisite traditional embroidery and turns them into clothes, accessories and homeware, had launched.

Kathryn Carberry of Thread Again (Image: Sandra Nagel)

Almost immediately, it was picked up by high-end online fashion site Wolf & Badger as one of its coveted brands.

Within weeks, she was at an exclusive fringe event at Paris Fashion Week, selected as part of the Impossible Objects’ Incubator Showcase to display her collection alongside brands from the US, Australia, Japan, India, and France.

Soon, she will be on the move again, one of two handpicked fashion brands to appear Impossible Objects’ banner at the forthcoming Copenhagen Fashion Week.

The two platforms put the fledgling brand with its repurposed vintage fabrics in front of buyers from across Europe and the United States.

And helps confirm that old is the new ‘new’.

Last month the growing shift towards greener fashion received royal approval, when Prince William joined Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates at an eco-summit hosted by the tech chief’s Breakthrough Energy organisation, while wearing a recycled plastic tie.

The green tie was handmade by Italian company Wilmok, using recycled polyethylene terephthalate, known as rPET, from plastics found in food and drink packaging.

While the pre-owned clothing marketplace led by the likes of Vinted and eBay has leapt forward: recent research from sustainable fashion brand, Thredup, found the global second-hand apparel market will hit up to £270 billion in value by 2028.

It found the market grew by 18% globally last year, three times faster than the overall apparel market.

The ‘new from old’ trend extends to British Vogue, which recently rubberstamped the trend for clothes which have already been around the block by adding new twists in the form of crochet, embroidery and patches.

Vintage sarees made into kimono style jackets featured at Paris Fashion Week (Image: Contributed)

At the same time, mainstream brands like Diesel have embraced recycled shredded denim, Ralph Lauren is using recycled cotton and the Woolmark Company, which has certified quality wool products for 60 years, has unveiled its first recycled wool specification to support the shift towards circular wool production.

It’s against a background of the global fashion industry producing 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually, accounting for 8.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The scale of the problem prompted the Textile Recycling Association to recently warn the textile recycling sector faces a “perfect storm” of economic and global market challenges against a huge influx of fast fashion that have flooded the market with low-quality and hard to recycle clothing.

At Thread Again, the fast fashion crisis is part of what drives Kathryn.

The other, she says, is the sheer beauty of the exotic vintage silks and fabrics she finds and the chance to revitalise them and quality modern textiles using traditional techniques such as hand looming, embroidery and block printing to bring them back to life.

(Image: Contributed)

“Growing up, I was surrounded by my grandmother’s collection of vintage garments. She had amazing clothes that were well-made and good quality.

“My generation is aware of making use of charity shops to look for garments and accessories that are different to ‘fast fashion’.

“There’s a realisation of the quality of fabrics that went into making clothes of my grandmother’s generation, when people didn’t just buy something and throw it in the charity shop after a month or two.

“There’s an appreciation for garments that were made to last and used age old techniques to make them.

“In Hanoi, in Silk Street, it was like heaven, there were lots of ready made garments and piles of new silks but also reused silks.”

Kathryn, who had recently completed a fashion and design studies at Cardonald College, works with a small workshop in Jaipur which specialises in reworking vintage textiles such as silk quilted bedding and beautifully patterned silk sarees.

Liaising with its master tailor and drawing on their expertise of traditional skills like kantha, a traditional form of decorative stitching, and pulkari, exquisite embroidery, she developed a range of co-ordinates, kimonos, jackets and sleepwear.

It helps support local artisans, makes use of the vintage fabrics and, she says, gives customers clothes that tell a story far beyond mass produced fashion.

But she is just one of a number of Scottish fashion brands successfully working with pre-used fabrics to create something new.

At Glasgow-based ethical fashion business ReJean Denim, Siobhan McKenna sources waste denim which she refashions into one-off jackets, skirts, dungarees and accessories.

As well as offering a personalised service to make items to customers’ own vision, there’s a denim repair services and workshops to teach clients the ancient Japanese art of Sashiko stitching and how to use it to customise their own denim.

In East Lothian, Cashmere Circle's skilled cashmere menders take cashmere attacked by moths or showing signs of wear, and repair it.

What can’t be repaired, is recycled into baby booties, gloves, scarves and hot water bottle covers.

Belinda Roberston, co-founder, says: "Since we started the business in 2019, we've seen a dramatic shift in consumer attitudes towards fast fashion and circular economy principles.

"Demand for our repair services has grown steadily, with a significant spike this year.

"We're increasingly handling older cashmere pieces, often family heirlooms with sentimental value. Our clients are exploring creative ways to revitalise their existing garments, and even irreparable items are being transformed into new pieces." 

Lotti Blades-Barrett checks Second Cashmere's rails of recycled jumpers (Image: Second Cashmere)

While Lotti Blades-Barrett, who runs Second Cashmere with Emily Smit-Dicks, sources cashmere from textile recyclers, saving garments from being bailed, shipped and potentially shredded.

Some are repaired so they are like new, others are remodelled into new items. When that’s not possible, the wool is unpicked and sold as thread to be used for other restoration work.

“There has been a massive shift towards second hand and repurposed items created using textile waste,” she says.

“There is now a degree of credibility to it, you are creating something that sits outside what you’d expect from a mainstream shop.

Emily Smit-Dicks of Second Cashmere revives a cashmere sweater (Image: Second Cashmere)

“People are looking for something that is a bit different.

“Reusing waste materials and having items in collections that have a story has become a big part of sustainability and more and more people are looking to do that.

“For many, it’s like wearing a badge of honour to have found a beautiful bargain on Vinted, or if they can say they wearing something made from old jeans or an old sari.”

She also offers needlework workshops teaching decorative darning and invisible mending.

“The demand for recycled and refurbished clothes is there already and it’s definitely increasing,” she adds.

Second Cashmere saves cashmere products and turns them into new products (Image: Second Cashmere)

“More and more people identify with the ethos of reusing and being able to repair clothing at home.

“They see second hand as a sustainable way to shop.”