Green Graduate

Bonnie Friend

14^th July 2010

In 2010 chic isn’t so much about the high end label you are sporting and the Bond Street address of its designer as it is about the back history, environmental credentials and humanitarian contribution of your clothes.

While Primark serves its purpose for last minute holiday purchases and shoes to be destroyed on a night out at some dodgy club in Clapham, the novelty of budget buys is waning and it is about investment and combating the financial guilt with the knowledge that you are simultaneously doing your bit to counter BP’s faux pas in the Atlantic.

So it is a jolly good thing that the new wave of fashion graduates are eco savvy, recycling ready, and are starting their own brands with this in mind.

Amongst the names of tomorrow is Jemima Beulah, who having graduated this year was amongst less than thirty selected graduates to feature in Graduate Fashion Show and has wasted no time in getting her main collection online and sale ready.

While her main collection, Hephzibah, pays homage to her Saville Row training and the almost entirely natural fabric range is universally sourced from British craft merchants, Beulah is not one to sit on her laurels, and this week launches a sub project alongside her designer range – Pip.

Pip is the ultimate in crafty chic, making use of recycled fabrics to produce everything from plaited necklaces and peg bags to tea cosies and hand knitted blankets within the affordable boundaries of just £4-£200.

As a designer, Jemima was inspired to launch Pip after seeing the amount of fabric that can go to waste in the creative process, and felt it should be put to better use. The project’s name adheres to this theory as well – being named after the pips in an apple – the waste product that, put to good use, can grow into something wonderful.

Of course, when you hear that a product has been pulled together out of scraps, you expect it to look like something from a car boot sale. This however, is the benefit of having recycled products made by someone who spends the rest of their time designing high fashion and bespoke tailoring. Like her Hephzibah Pre-Fall 10 women’s collection, Pip sees Beulah drawing on her innate sense of style with a modern twist.

Of Hephzibah, Beulah says: “I have been interning with Patrick Grant on Saville Row since 2009 and I wanted to bring an element of what I had learnt there into my collection especially in the quality and texture of the cloth, from the natural Harris Tweed to the worsted brush wool.”

The series of tailored trousers, jackets and dresses with hidden seams and effortless structure combine natural fabrics from the suppliers of Saville Row and traditional hand knitting and weaving techniques lending the organic theme that runs simultaneously through Pip. It is an unusual combination for a graduate who has not long since turned 23, but Beulah does have a unique understanding of where fashion is heading – refined, recycled and really chic.

“I see this collection sitting in the same market place as Jil Sander and Martin Margelia; two designers that I admire for their conceptual garment construction and innovative designs. The customer attracted to this market will appreciate the attention to detail and high level of quality and consideration in every garment produced.”

As Hephzibah launched last week online, Pip will appear at Greenwich market this Wednesday; an appropriate contrast to the modern market of her main collection, this arena is inextricable from the designer’s creative process, and an appropriate place for the project to start out: “I am excited about visiting antique markets or old rummage stalls, finding something unique and old, made using traditional craftsmanship. I am fascinated by old traditions and purposes for garments and accessories, when designers truly were problem solvers.”

With two collections on the go and not a month out of university, Beulah is sure to make her name in any way she sees fit, although she claims: “I have never pretended to want to be the next best designer; I am not sure when (if ever) I knew that I wanted to be a fashion designer. I simply knew as a child that I liked making clothes, and since then I have been working with clothing and fabrics.”

So if you want to get in on the act while the necklaces are still only £4 a piece, I suggest you get down to Greenwich market next week – besides, it is the perfect shopping excuse – I am not merely accessorizing! I am saving the world!

For more information on the Hephzibah line visit:

jemimahephzibahbeulah.com or notjustalabel.com/jemimahephzibahbeulah