On the 13th September 2024, AshbyCapital partnered with designers VIN+OMI to host their 20th anniversary fashion show at The Kensington Building.
Starring The Great British Bake Off’s Dame Prue Leith on the runway, alongside a range of celebrity guest models, the show received nationwide press coverage across the BBC, ITV, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, Evening Standard, Independent and more.
After two decades of eco-innovation, protecting the environment, campaigning and ground-breaking social and educational impact work, VIN+OMI chose The Kensington Building to celebrate their 20th anniversary with a very special and explosive fashion show titled MOXIE. Taking over the third floor of the building, the show utilised the former department stores excellent natural light and grand 3.3m ceiling heights.
VIN + OMI are unique as a brand, having never sold their fashion outcomes. Instead, most of their research and works are acquired by museums around the world, including the V&A in London, for their permanent collections.
As part of VIN + OMI’s practice, they never extract from the environment for fashion, instead they use what the environment can offer as waste. Two decades of environmental innovation were featured in this show, including garments made from chestnuts, cow parsley, nettles, butterbur, and flax, and textiles from waste plant material donated by The King from His Majesty’s estates at Sandringham and Highgrove. In addition, the set for MOXIE was made entirely from cardboard waste and then recycled after the show.
Projects featured in the fashion show include textiles made from recycled waste paint tubes from Daler Rowney, Recycled merchandise from Jagermeister, Cans from their Birmingham homeless project ‘Can to Catwalk’, recycled Team GB kit, recycled Royal Navy wetsuits and a new VIN+OMI recycled plastic textile which has been micro bonded to stop the release of particles into the eco-system.
This commitment to sustainability marries The Kensington Building’s environmental credentials, which included reusing and repurposing more than 60% of the original structure and foundations in its construction, creating 30% less embodied carbon versus industry benchmarks. The winner of the BCO London Award 2023 for Best Refurbished/Recycled Workplace, The Kensington Building also embraces an enhanced commitment to reducing everyday operational energy usage, through comprehensive building management systems and air quality sensors which integrate with digital screens to display live sustainability and air quality information.