Join us on Saturday, November 9 for a Sustainable Designer Showcase highlighting and exploring work from Baltic and Nordic designers focusing on upcycling, recycling and sustainability. In coordination with Sustainable Design Showcase events at Scandinavia House throughout the day, including the workshop “Trash to Trend” with Estonian designer Reet Aus in the morning, visitors will have the opportunity to meet and speak with Nordic and Baltic designers working with recycling, sustainability and upcycling, and purchase select items on display. More details and new participants will be added shortly so please check back.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Reet Aus is a PhD-qualified Estonian fashion designer and environmental activist, a natural rebel who founded REET AUS COLLECTION®. She is a pioneer in the field of industrial upcycling for fashion, and has developed the UPMADE® certification, in order to pass on her knowledge to brands and factories.
Born in Finland, Heidi Hankaniemi’s mission is to rescue and restore value to discarded textiles, incorporating their history and the memories of their makers into the item. She mends and joins these fragile pieces into works of art.
Asta Vilhelmina Guómundsdottir is an Icelandic artist and fashion designer. Inspired by nature and natural fibers, she uses materials she finds in her environment, such as seaweed, wool, horsehair, silk, soil and plant fibers. Her artworks and clothing are inspired by the ever-changing Icelandic nature.
Guðrún Borghildur is an Icelandic designer creating upcycled gloves from discarded leather jackets.
Helga Mogensen is an Icelandic jeweler working with a variety of materials such as silver, copper, brass, driftwood and fish skin. The main focus in her work is to use her personal experience in life and translate that into objects to wear, as well as wall pieces.
Killud is the jewelry line of Estonian designer Angela Orgusaar. Her pieces are made of unusual, but real materials: windscreens, charcoal, plants, mechanics and electrical details, among others. Inspired by glimpses of beauty, the natural materials are used with love and creativity.
Luks is the project of Sandra Luks, an Estonian designer whose creations emerge primarily from repurposed denim through processes like tearing, weaving, and sewing, in order to form distinctive and wearable pieces. By deconstructing old jeans down to the thread, she has unlocked new possibilities for material innovation.
Sille Luik by Sille Luiga produces The Two Cents jewelry collection, which is made from stretched copper coins. For each earring, a cent is heated up and passed between two revolving steel cylinders – like letting a train rollover it.
Karlotta by Estonian designer Eva-Karlotta Tatar presents its collection in which old leather garments were used to create new value in things otherwise considered waste. As an outer material, old leather jackets are used, generally considered post-consumer waste, and the inner lining is a production leftover from an ECCO shoe factory.
Hyti is a line of soap holders by Estonian designer Anne-Liis Leht. Using soda-lime glass, which, until now, has never been reprocessed or recycled in Estonia, the soap holders are fabricated, in both clear and colored glass, putting this material back into circulation.
Ideeklaas is a jewelry line by Estonian designer Kalli Sein, who uses recycled glass and guitar strings, and considers the nature of the original material in the process of production. The labels contain information about the original product, conveying and valuing history.
Elize Hiiop Jewellery is an Estonian fine porcelain jewelry brand of minimalist aesthetics that practices the techniques of upcycling, recycling, and sustainable innovation. In this small series, the porcelain is combined with wood, silver, bone and glass, following the concept of circular economy.
Ikigi is a book binding studio based in Tallin, Estonia.
Circulose is a Swedish company that makes fashion circular. Having created a material made by recovering cellulose from worn-out clothes and production scraps, Circulose provides material to brands that might otherwise virgin textile products.
Aura Taylor is a Lithuanian fashion designer and educator living in New York City. She has previously run an independent fashion brand, Aura Taylor, has been a Creative Consultant for the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and has taught at Pratt Institute and in the MFA in Fashion Design Program at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
IMAGE CREDITS—1 & 2: Ásta Vilhelmina Guðmundsdottir (Iceland); 3: LUKS (Estonia); 4: Helga Mogensen (Iceland); 5: Hyti (Estonia)