Bethany Williams is a UK-based menswear designer committed to effecting social change by collaborating with new charities each season while addressing problems from all angles of the industry, from agriculture to communication. With only three collections under her belt, the newcomer has quickly gained recognition from the likes of Anna Wintour and Nicolas Ghesquière for her work with homeless shelters, foodbanks and recycled garments co-created by prison inmates.
Breadline Collection by Bethany WilliamsWilliams began her career working part-time at a fashion magazine but, taking after her pattern-cutter mother, she pursued fashion design starting with a fine art foundation in Brighton, followed by menswear fashion design at the London College of Fashion.
She founded her label in 2017 and chose to source book waste, second-hand denim and hand-woven textiles to create 100 percent recycled garments for her projects.
The current collection ‘Breadline’ particularly wants to highlight and help find solutions to the hidden hunger in the UK, specifically working alongside the Vauxhall Food Bank and Tesco to achieve this. The collection has been developed using waste materials from the food bank user’s household, and also is made from recycled cardboard and ‘Tesco everyday value’ branded organic prints, all donated by Tesco.
Through traditional hand-crafted techniques and working with local craftsmen/women, Williams has developed the surface of those waste materials to create hand crafted woven, printed, knitted and embroidered materials.
Every single garment is 100% sustainable and made in the UK. (even the buttons are hand crafted in the Lake District from the planting of trees).
Williams’ brand provides an alternative system for fashion production, as they believe fashions’ reflection upon the world can create positive change.
