Meet the Fashion Designer Upcycling Sleeping Bags into Streetwear
“I think dad was hoping once I started earning as a pharmacist, I’d take over the family business!”, Nimesh Gadhia laughs. Instead, he used those earnings to pay his way through art college, buy materials, and spend nine years in Amsterdam pursuing fashion, working for G-Star, Denham the Jeanmaker, and Scotch & Soda.
The 46-year-old men’s designer always hoped for a career in fashion but, “Being Indian and having quite studious parents who wanted me to get a proper degree first, I obviously couldn’t”. So, after agreeing to his parents’ bet and securing a MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Gadhia finally began to go against the grain.
His latest project is just a glimpse of his distinctive style: “I need to start hanging around funeral parlours!”. Explaining, “This relative of mine passed away recently, and they left a whole stack of silk shirts handmade in India. They’re white, cream, off-white, and there’s loads! I’m looking forward to turning those into some beautiful Hawaiian style oversized shirts”. When I asked if he was planning on selling this collection, or keeping it for personal use, he said, “I hadn’t thought that far. This is why I’m not a successful businessman. Most people would have a plan of how they’re gonna monetize it…I just wanted to make some nice stuff.”
He undersells himself. Impossibly practical, highly analytical, and a real stickler for logic, none of Gadhia’s creative choices come without reasoning. One look at his studio will tell you this. The large table in the centre is covered in paper, meticulously documenting his thought process. ‘WHAT DO I NEED?’ is written at the top. A series of diagrams, measurements, arrows, lists of materials, and design drafts follow.
His designs have involved transforming suits into kimono jackets, macs into cargo pants, and camping attire into coats. “When I was at Denham, we got loads of vintage Swedish, WW2 sleeping bags. Then we turned them into Parkas, chopped off the bottom, made those into kimono sleeves, finished the binding, and some put some branding on a label. I want to try find some sleeping bags around here!”
Gadhia sources materials, sometimes from his own wardrobe, but often from vintage wholesalers, and he is hopeful that upcycling will become more and more mainstream. He cites the British start-up E.L.V. Denim as an example of this hope. Its founder, Anna Foster, used grants from the British Fashion Council and the UK’s National Innovation Agency to open upcycling ateliers. “Before it was even set up, she was booked up for like three years”, Gadhia tells me, “Some big brands wanted to upcycle their stuff”, and Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and Moda Operandi already have.
Upcycling’s public image has certainly come a long way from the old stereotypes of tatty school play costumes designed by mum, or retired teachers crafting on Etsy. For Gadhia, upcycling is about transforming something uncool and dust-gathering into something cool and durable. Denim is a favourite fabric to work with, precisely for that reason. “Normally when you come to design denim, a lot of it’s about washes, treatments: you’ve got bleach, stone, enzymes, potassium permanganate spray, staining and so on. I don’t like that. But I do like the fabric itself, because it’s sturdy. It represents heritage. The fact that you buy it raw, and you wear it over time, gives it that inherent sustainability. You should wear a pair of jeans for over 10 years, and you write your history in them by the way it fades and what you have in your pockets”.
Of course, after this thoughtful reflection, comes a humble jibe, “Oh, and it’s easy to sew!”.
In terms of Gahdia’s own inspiration, he credits two fashion giants: Aitor Throup and Leo Brockovich.
“One thing I realised from meeting Aitor, is that it’s about having an answer for every possible question. You look at something and think, does that work? Why does that work? Why does it not? Why am I choosing that topstitch and not this one? Make sure you have a reason for every decision you make, and that way it can’t be wrong. Then your art will always stand up for itself. You don’t have to keep defending it.”
However, Gadhia is not shy addressing his own creative blunders — the times when he didn’t question things, or keep in tune with “the politics of design”. Take his fashioning of stretchy suits, made for parkour and Brazilian jujitsu, during the 2008 financial crash. “I wasn’t understanding why it wasn’t selling, because I didn’t understand the political climate or how it affected fashion. You can’t exist in a bubble!”.
Speaking of bubbles and bursting them, as our time ran out, I wondered what the most annoying question to ask a fashion designer would be…
“If you had to wear one item of clothing every day, what would it be?”, I posed. “Is there anything that you just don’t get sick of?”
Of course, I was met with good-humoured resistance, “No! It’s a strong no! I get sick of everything! At some point I’ll look back and think why the hell would I ever wear that?”.
Don’t worry. The good news is, if you do get sick of your clothes, you can always cut them up and stitch them back together again. Google ‘upcycling’.
