An Upcycle Collaboration For Circularity In Luxury Fashion

Sustainable fashion brands are everywhere. This has given way for more acceptance of the concepts that lead brands to circularity. Out of Stockholm, Sweden, the Scandinavian minimalist brand, Filippa K has founded the label with the motto “Designed To Last.” Circularity can mean many things for a lot of brands, and for Filippa K it started in 1993, and now it goes beyond just the materials they use in their designs.

Recently launching Limited Edition and Preowned which introduced the brand’s circular approach to fashion, Filippa K takes their slow fashion ideals out of minimal design into intricate avant-garde designs. The Swedish design house has collaborated with Stina Randestad, an emerging designer hailed for her innovations in material combinations and unique fabrication techniques. Randestad would transform the clean lines of Filippa K into one-of-a-kind statement pieces as a blueprint for circular luxury fashion.

Randestad recalls the culmination of the “project’s outcome [as] twofold for me – it shows an artistic approach to upcycling, but it also shows an established brand taking a leap of faith, investing in a designer whose aesthetic isn’t perhaps associated with the traditional Scandinavian look.” She has taken bold steps for Filippa K clothing in this direction but as an admirer of its aesthetic. She continues, “It’s been a dream to use Filippa K garments as the raw materials when creating new ones – it illustrates that when you start with a high-quality foundation, remade pieces can be luxurious and long-lasting.”

Filippa K uses sustainable fibers, organic, natural materials, recycled polyester, and mono fibers or mixed polymers. With the Filippa K x Stinarand collaboration, the label decided to upcycle some of its finest archival pieces, rather than use recycled materials. This approach to circularity explores Filippa K’s slow fashion concepts.

Second-hand Filippa K garments were examined and selected for their durability and vitality. Stina Randstad, or Stinarand for this collaboration, reconstructed those selected garments into six bespoke pieces that leverage imperfections into sartorial abstraction. Stinarand describes the final products as “sculptural yet wearable,” alluding to the couture-like revisions of the minimal designs of the Filippa K label.

Stinarand says of her experience collaborating with Filippa K, “I’m very impressed at the level of commitment Filippa K is showing with their sustainability work, as well as their investment in creativity. It’s vital for brands to engage in larger initiatives of course, but also to provide a platform for up-and-coming designers to express their vision. Filippa K has entrusted me with the unique opportunity to freely explore how second-hand garments, samples, and claims can be transformed into something completely different.”

Working alongside the Filippa K team, Stinarand surgically created six unique garments, displaying shapes with fabric and textures that radiate a sense of liveliness and exuberance. The six upcycled Filippa K pieces are The Collage Cardigan, The Mesh Dress, The Layered Puffer, The Wavy Knit, The Shirt Dress, and The Metallic Blazer.

The Collage Cardigan is an oversize-crafted, collage pattern construction fabricated from five upcycled mohair wool Filippa K sweaters. Stinarand used other scraps and leather belts to create her signature “stiff and stretchy” wave design technique to construct the cardigan. She applies this technique by stitching together alternating colors of the knitwear panels. The cardigan has sections of black embossed croc leather details.

Stinarand created The Mesh Dress from scraps of three upcycled Filippa K dresses and two prototype garments in various materials like silk, satin, and triacetate. The asymmetric layers form a three-dimensional fabric technique using laser cuts for the outer layer fringed mesh. The black lines are a high-shine textile foil placed on discarded plastic.

The Layered Puffer is a fun piece to look at, and hopefully, as fun to wear. The complex, high-neck body-con jacket also has a zip-front dress underneath. Stinarand used four down puffer jackets in water-repellent polyamide from a previous Filippa K collection and four pairs of Filippa K’s Soft Sport technical jersey leggings. Stitching circular panels of a deconstructed puffer jacket, covering the overlapping layer, Stinarand creates a spherical structure. Blue and orange satin-wrapped cotton rope trim with a heavy zig-zag embroidery complete the puffer’s architecture.

The slim, Wavy Knit blouse uses viscose elastane from four upcycled and hand-dyed Filippa K milano sweaters. The Wavy Knit is another “stiff and stretchy” wave design from Stinarand, on the front and side of this fiery blouse, she stitched foil-coated heavy cotton canvas ribbons together with knitted material.

There is also the mini dress design, The Shirt Dress, constructed from four upcycled Filippa K menswear cotton poplin shirts, two womenswear cotton poplin dresses, and six pairs of Soft Sport gloss leggings in the stretch-polyamide. At the front and back of the dress are a sun flare design, a technique accomplished through stitching shirt material into stretched legging fabric, all the way down the skirt and vertical panels.

The final piece from the Filippa K x Stinarand collaboration is The Metallic Blazer. This oversized wool menswear blazer from a past season is reinterpreted with a mirrored signature pattern. Printed through a heat transfer process, Stinarand shapes the metallic plastic foil in blue, silver, and holographic green and orange. The abstract arrangement forms the letters FKSR as a sign-off to the collaboration of creativity and circularity between Stina Randestad and Filippa K. 

Stinarand meticulously identified and selected pieces with qualities that indicated the potential of new life. These materials inform her creative vision and introduce unexpected textile combinations that implement techniques that transform the minimal, understated Filippa K aesthetic into one-of-a-kind fashion statements on circular luxury fashion.