Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems opens at the Design Museum

An exhibition highlighting London-based designer Bethany Williams' waste-combating, social-driven vision for the fashion industry has opened at the Design Museum.

Exhibited in the atrium of London's Design Museum, Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems is a celebration of Williams' work which explores and responds to social issues through the use of community-led enrichment initiatives.

Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems is a free display in the atrium of the Design Museum

A number of key works by the designer were exhibited across the four walls of the atrium's balcony gallery, which is free to entry.

Mannequins are displayed among textiles samples, photography and raw waste materials in efforts to highlight the studio's commitment to sustainable fashion.

The display was chosen to be shown in a free entry space in the museum

"I decided to organise the display thematically rather than by collection," said Design Museum's head of curatorial and interpretation Priya Khanchandani.

"It opens with a section about the studio specifically and then there's a part about creative process, intellectual references and the way in which they propose alternative infrastructures of working, followed by a section about reuse and another about community collaborations," she told Dezeen.

"Bethany's work not only tackles the question of the environmental impact of design, but it also has an amazing social purpose."

The exhibition design was completed by Edit

Williams is a fashion designer, humanitarian and artist. She graduated from Brighton University with a degree in Critical Fine Art before receiving a master's from the London College of Fashion in Menswear.

She launched her namesake brand in 2017 and has strived to spotlight and respond to social and environmental issues, her works see her partnering with local grassroots programs and manufacturing collections using waste materials.

Garments are exhibited alongside research, drawings and materials

A section of the display exhibits Willliams' work as part of the Emergency Designer Network. The initiative is a collaboration between herself and designers Phoebe English, Cozette McCreery and Holly Fulton.

The group of creatives, with their textile manufacturing knowledge and teams of volunteers, produced 12,000 scrubs, 100,000 masks and 4,000 gowns for frontline healthcare workers during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Waste from packaging tape sourced from Rimini, Italy was handwoven and constructed into functional items and garments as part of Williams's Autumn Winter 2018 collection, which was on display.

"I felt it was very important to show not just the finished garments, which you would see in a retail fashion context; being a museum display I wanted to add other layers of information," explained Khanchandani.

Williams' work merges streetwear and craft

"There are process materials like drawings and sketches, and also source material," said Khanchandani. "For instance, a jacket made of waste newspaper is shown alongside some of the waste material, the Liverpool Echo, which is dangling next to the garment."

"You're able to see the journey of the objects from inception, to finished product."

Williams has collaborated with San Patrignano, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation programme

Each season, the fashion studio collaborates with different local charities and grassroots programs and donates a percentage of its profits to its causes.

"With our work, we hope to continue to reach new audiences, encourage inclusivity and positive change for the fashion industry," said Williams. "The Design Museum continues to be aligned with this via the exhibitions curated, including their Waste Age exhibition, which we featured in last year."

"We are so proud to showcase our new exhibition: Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems, a celebration of the new way of working proposed for the fashion industry by the studio's work."

Dresses and corsetry feature boning constructed from waste materials

The opening of Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems was timed to coincide with Williams' Autumn Winter 2022 collection, titled The Hands that Heal Us, which was presented at the museum.

The collection included a cactus leather jacket, and garments made from recycled and organic-based denim with detachable metal hardware that aid the recycling process at the end of its life.

A skeleton suit was informed by a 19th-century children's playsuit

In 2016, Williams graduated from London College of Fashion and showed her MA graduate collection in the university's show as part of London Fashion Week.

Last year's Waste Age exhibition at the Design Museum, which featured Williams' work, explored how design has contributed to the increasing throwaway culture and how people can create an alternative circular economy that doesn't exploit the planet.

Photography is byFelix Speller.

Bethany Williams: Alternative Systems is on display at the Design Museum from 22 February 2022. See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Hussein Chalayan: Archipelago exhibition highlights designer's most iconic works

An exhibition at Shanghai's Power Station of Design museum showcased 130 pieces of work by British, Turkish-Cypriot fashion designer Hussein Chalayan that explore his career, themes of race, culture and migration.

Titled Hussein Chalayan: Archipelago, the exhibition was divided into a number of chapters, or fictional islands of an archipelago.

Hussein Chalayan: Archipelago wsa on show at Shanghai's Power Station of Design museum

Over 130 pieces by Chalayan were exhibited, with each of the chapters-cum-fictional islands exploring the key themes that encompass Chalayan's designs, creations and collections.

Chalayan is best known for his designs that transcend both fashion and art. His collections often include futuristic garments including his Autumn Winter 2000 show, where garments doubled as home furnishings.

The exhibition contained 130 works by Hussein Chalayan

The exhibition starts with two works from Chalayan's first and second collections that were made after graduating in 1993 from London's Central Saint Martins university.

From here, garments, objects, images and films made between 1993 and 2020 were displayed across and within monochromatic platforms and alcoves of varying shapes and sizes.

The exhibition is Power Station of Art's first fashion exhibit

"Through his designs, people can get a strong feeling for his thinking and criticism on the dichotomies of globalization and localism, the individual and the grand world theatre, and mechanistic views and the spiritual world," said the museum.

"Clothing as body cover is another kind of escape, a detachment of emotions, and a site of contradictions. Chalayan lets his clothes oscillate between the two-dimensional (tailoring, films) and three-dimensional (fashion shows) in an effort for them to overcome their wearers and become disembodied, nameless narrators."

The exhibition highlights Chalayan's key works

Mechanical dresses from Chalayan's Autumn Winter 2007 show titled Airborne were exhibited within a black-painted display unit. Mannequins were draped in the illuminated and laser-cut garments and elegantly posed as though taking off for flight.

"He once stated that he wanted 'to create a sense of life for the clothes,' which is also what we hope and imagine for the islands of this exhibition," said the museum.

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The ninth chapter of the exhibition displayed pieces from the Act to Form collection, which was shown during London Fashion Week's Autumn Winter 2017 schedule.

Mannequins were positioned ripping through the exhibition's paper walls wearing garments that were ripped open to reveal glitter- and confetti-filled linings and innards. The collection explored and revisited ideas surrounding Greek civilisation and identity.

The exhibition was divided into nine different chapters

Positive moulds of busts used to create garments, from Chalayan's Spring Summer 2006 collection titled Inertia, were suspended from the ceiling, while the negative moulds were built into the exhibition walls.

"Hussein Chalayan liberates garments from their restraints in terms of function, trends, and the fashion industry, allowing them to express themselves more freely and profusely," said the museum.

His work often features radical designs

"Chalayan repeatedly discusses the topics of migration, travel, separation, and return, and they become more complex and unpredictable through the intervention of technology and cyberspace," said the museum.

"Transcending cultural divides, transcending race, transcending religion, transcending the human body, transcending gene theory; Chalayan weaves the mysticism, Moorish, Teutonic, as well as East Asian cultures into his creations."

The exhibition is Chalayan's first Chinese exhibit

In 2015, Chalayan designed elasticated costumes and sequinned garments for performers in his first self-directed dance production at Sadler's Wells theatre.

In 2018, he was awarded the London Design Medal not long after his Act to Form show at London's Sadler's Wells in 2017, which marked the designer's return to London Fashion Week after showing in Paris for over a decade.

Hussein Chalayan: Archipelago was on show at the Power Station of Art. SeeDezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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