Hello and welcome back to Leeds RAG. Last week we had the pleasure of interviewing Karen Dennis, one of our very own Leeds University lecturers! And if that wasn’t exciting enough, she is also the founder of Ketchup Clothes, a super funky sustainable fashion brand which specialises in recycled and reclaimed streetwear. Cool right?
Let’s kick things off with a bit of background to Karen’s impressive career within the sustainable fashion sector…..
In the beginning she studied at London College of Fashion, before working as a pattern cutter for a small women’s leather manufacturing company. Whilst in London, Karen helped to set up a project called No Logo with Oxfam in 1990. It was based on Carnaby Street and involved making clothes using cloth that had been donated to Oxfam. After this, Karen moved to Leeds and embarked on a Textile Design degree and she brought No Logo with her – here, she focused on upcycling garments for the club scene in the 90s.
Soon after, Karen’s PHD took her to Nepal. Here she observed native women, who had no electricity or access to running water, making traditional materials to be sold at Liberty's. It was the relationship between these two worlds which Karen found particularly interesting. Another highlight for Karen was her work in Tanzania, where she witnessed the damage the second hand clothing trade is doing to communities in Africa and the indigenous industry. She worked with local tailors and experimented in making second hand clothes mixed with traditional cloth (some of this is also available on her website).
As if all this wasn’t enough, Karen created a project called Passion for Fashion, which was all about empowering women- it revolved around improving self-esteem and identity. It enabled women who did not have much disposable income to get involved with recycled fashion by providing them with the resources to create upcycled garments to be showcased at a fashion show. Moreover, Karen helped set up the Makers Project with Martin House which focused on upcycling their second hand clothes to build up a range and participate in pop up events.
Karen followed her passion of exploring how to make clothes out of recycled materials, she particularly focused on creating regular, more basic and unisex pieces that were accessible to the general public- this planted the seed of Ketchup! The brand went from strength to strength, and even won second prize at the Alternative Fashion Show in 2008!
Read on for an exclusive insight from Karen herself....
What inspired you to pursue a career in sustainability?
“I came from a generation where everything was very packaged, but also from my Mum’s generation of rationing; so I had two sides. My mum had this thing called the useful box, when we were little we put packaging in there and we built robots out of the rubbish- so I engaged with waste from quite an early age. Also, my grandma was amazing- I tried to do this now and it's so hard- she would be able to fit all her rubbish for the week in a little bag. Everything else had been cut down or found a use for; she didn’t bring waste into her life unless she could get rid of it. Also, I was a Womble! They were quite influential. They were little characters and they made things out of rubbish. So those are really early childhood things that inspired me. Since I have got older it has been responding to the horror of waste and from a position of ethics. I have been involved in this industry a very very long time, and I see its great potential. I think if we can start throwing in good seeds then it would help” .
Please can you tell me a bit more about your fashion brand Ketchup?
“It was really set up in 2004 but it came from No Logo and my research, with focus on proving the validity of my work. In the early days it was about workshops and getting some funding as well as working with education. I did many events for all ages- I must have done about 200 workshops with community groups teaching people how to recycle. I also started selling through market stalls and concessions in shops. I spent about eight years doing festivals, I had a street theatre company called Pandemonium and used to go to all the festivals around the UK and do a sort of ‘pimp my clothes’; where people would come to me wanting the festival look."
"I am now really pushing my brand ahead and trying to make a living out of it, through developing the online shop, my product range and my techniques. I hope in time to move into more manufacturing as at the moment I make all my own pieces”.
Would you mind going into detail about the processes behind your designs, how do you merge the discarded clothing to create the finished products?
“I produce skins of fabric. These could be from old kids shirts, to somebody throwing vests away, and I make them into a simple shape. The idea is to create basic shapes that people understand- everybody knows what a hoodie looks like! The idea is that other people could send me their t shirts and I cut them up. I use all sorts of materials to make the clothes; including an old tent, a pair of old jeans, even a sheepskin rug that I found in a bin."
You mentioned fabric skins, are they little bits of fabrics that you sew together to make large flat fabric pieces?
“Yes! So with mass production, you can’t really change a lot of the set ups, but we can get the fabrics to go back into the system in a way that they recognise. That's really the biggest thing for me at the moment- how do we take it further into mass production?”
It sounds great! Do you plan how your pieces visually look, or does it evolve as you go along?
“I do feel it's a bit like a painting on a canvas; I love it when I've just got a pile of scraps and I'm just, you know, adding them on and then they grow! So little features can come in unexpected places, so you never know exactly and that's what I’ve always liked. There are two sides of my approach, I am a pattern cutter and I love pattern cutting; the other side is doing the moulage where I actually just work on the stand which I do for more commission pieces”.
Where do you source your recycled fabrics from?
“I believe in the waste fairies…. I know that sounds ridiculous, but things come my way! A lot of what this started out with, was with me saying I've got loads and loads of fabric that I've got to use up. I've got a lifetime to use it up and I'm still working through that lifetime. I have got a lot of materials from my travels, in the first lock down I actually took to making masks and it was lovely using all the fabric that I had been on my travels with. I thought, well, I can't travel physically, but my eye can travel. So yeah, I have quite a lot of fabric anyway, but then also I've collected fabric; people will naturally give me things. And as I say, the collection I've got at the moment is all from recycled materials. I haven't bought any of that fabric. It's come my way: I found it in bins, I found it in skips, I found it through Hyde Park Christmas (waste around Hyde Park after students leave in June). It is mainly mundane fabrics, your t-shirts, your denim, old tents etc. I think going forward what I want to do is encourage more people to send in and to engage with that recycling process”.
Do you have any advice on how to prolong the lives of our clothes?
“I think to actually prolong the lives of our own clothes; we just need to love them a bit more! We need to learn how to repair if we need to and we sometimes might need to rethink how we wash our clothes. I'm not suggesting that we don't wash our clothes, because particularly in these times, but washing has quite big environmental impacts. That’s where you need to buy better and buy things for longevity. Then look at things differently, for example, if I'm just going to have a t-shirt for maybe this season, I could then turn it into something afterwards- maybe I'd turn it into a cushion cover- I can still keep it. I think it's about being much cleverer in your choices and not wanting to have that that constant fashion cycle."
"I do feel bad sometimes about how we teach and respond to trends. I think in the future possibly we will be able to still have those special things, but maybe they're made out of biodegradable materials, and then you can decompose it. Or do we get better at renting, so you can have it but not own it? There are a lot of rental places and clothing exchanges being set up and they're very important. I think we want nice things that reflect our personality- that's a key part of who we are! But we need to think about whether we need to own all of those things? I thinking renting and leasing will become much more important, how we negotiate that through COVID and everything is another matter, but I think that could help.
I'm a great believer in second hand clothes and I've always bought second hand; that's another key element of sustainability and keeping things in circulation. I think if things can't be made out of recycled materials, then making sure that the purchases are ethical is still very important, because it is only by addressing the imbalance and poverty within the industry that we will also solve problems in sustainability.”
In terms of upcycling, how do you select what parts of a garment to focus on to save?
"Not every part of item can be used; you do have to make a balance. Generally with a t-shirt you're going to have stains or a cuff. I love playing with logos, I once made a hoodie and it was Adidas, Diesel and a Jack Jones T shirt; I literally found them in a bag as they’d been thrown away. I cut them up and I like that idea that you're cutting through logos and playing around with the graphics.”
What top tips would you give to students trying to be more sustainable with their fashion choices?
“Buy second hand; where possible keep things in circulation.
If you're going to buy- buy better.
Learn how to repair.
Learn how to upcycle.
If you can't buy something out of recycled materials- then make sure it is an ethical purchase.”
Karen is currently focusing on building Ketchup’s brand and website. She is based at Aire Place Studios, a non-profit creative space for exhibitions for local artists and a community artist hub. It is reliant on funding from the council and other businesses, as well as from donations from the public, either financially or through art supplies. To find out more about this amazing space, the artists and future exhibitions, or if you would like to support this cause in any way please follow this link.
A huge thank you to Karen for inspiring us all with her passion for a more sustainable future for the industry!
To check out more of Karen's collections please follow these links to her website and Instagram.
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Leeds RAG x
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