As Extinction Rebellion continue their occupation of Trafalgar Square, as part of their latest effort to get people to wake up to the climate emergency we’re currently facing, a few miles away in East London, legendary boutique Browns unveils its own effort to address the issues surrounding sustainability within fashion. Launching today, the concept store has joined forces with radical rising designer and Dazed 100-er Duran Lantink on a capsule collection made entirely of surplus Browns stock (brands with a penchant for an end-of-season bonfire: take note).  

Over the course of the last few years, Amsterdam-based Lantink has set about redefining what sustainable fashion looks like with his zero-waste, slashed-and-spliced hybrid garments, while also tackling the rampant consumerism that permeates our society in 2019. 

At his AW19 show, held in a Dutch discount outlet, he sent a look made up of empty McDonald’s wrappers and cartons down the runway, before ‘shoplifting’ models wearing garments covered in alarm tags and wild-eyed shoppers barging each other out of the way with carrier bags swarmed the space. “It was this idea of the crazy way people act when they hit the sales or the bargain outlet. And we had Enya playing over the top, so it was quite funny,” the designer explains. 

Sourcing unwanted garments from wherever he can find them (which sometimes includes his own wardrobe), each piece comes together like a jigsaw puzzle in his mind, before he commits his ideas to paper in the form of a collage. “I was always really interested in Martin Margiela and Walter Van Beirendonck when I was growing up, because my mum and a lot of her friends wore stuff by them,” Lantink recalls. “That whole Belgian scene and what was going on there was very inspiring to me.”

When it comes to the newly launched Browns collab, the collection marks a first for Lantink given all pieces are made solely of surplus luxury stock (though he’s not allowed to elaborate on which brands’ garments he took the scissors to, dedicated fashion fans will likely come to their own conclusion when scrolling through the gallery above). 

Let loose in the concept store’s London warehouse, he admits it was kind of overwhelming to be confronted with so many options. “I ended up going with the pieces I was most drawn to, like the green vinyl coat,” he confirms. The offering itself is a mish-mash of reworked styles, textures, and colours, with sleeping bag-style coats that transform into puffer jackets, hybrid evening dresses, and a reinterpretation of the classic white shirt all on the line-up. And of course, they’re all total one-offs. 

The project marks the launch of Browns’ Conscious initiative, which will see the store take steps towards a more sustainable future, with clothing rental and the ways in which it can join the circular economy all set to be explored in the coming months and ultimately years. 

Watch the first of three short films exploring conscious fashion below, and shop the Duran Lantink x Browns collection here.