Amy Powney is the London-based, Lancastrian fashion designer who, three years ago, did for sustainable fashion what it hadn’t been able to do for itself. She made it, relatively speaking, exciting.
As the subject of a 2022 documentary called Fashion Reimagined, about her quest to make a fully sustainable collection, she took audiences on the twists and turns of trying to produce garments that were – deep breath – organic, traceable, socially responsible and considerate of animal welfare; produced in the smallest geographic region possible; and using minimal water and chemicals.
The film created a buzz in the industry and, while the clothes remained out of the financial reach of many, Powney showed what was possible if (a big “if”) you had the scruples, and were willing to do the legwork – the journey took her to Uruguay, Peru, Austria and Turkey.
In its aftermath, Powney became, in her words, “[a] kind of pin-up girl of sustainability”. It didn’t always sit comfortably. “It came with a massive amount of weight and pressure and responsibility, and it wasn’t something I was prepared for emotionally,” she says now over the phone. “I was going to bed at night, not sleeping, [thinking] well how the bloody hell am I going to fix this fashion industry?”
The clothes she was shown trying to make in the documentary were for Mother of Pearl, a womenswear label founded in 2002. Over the years, as Powney worked her way up the ranks to creative director, the brand became synonymous with her minimal aesthetic and her sustainability drive. At its height, it was worn by Gwyneth Paltrow and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
After winning the Vogue award for the best young designer of the year in 2017, which comes with a big cash prize, Powney decided to use the money to create a sustainable collection from field to finished garment. Her quest became the documentary.
In the years since, Powney has become known for her activism and tenacity in trying to create a fairer fashion industry. She has also become known for designing very elegant clothes. Then, earlier this year, after 19 years with Mother of Pearl, Powney announced she was leaving – she “wanted to exit, turning 40 I wanted to launch my own brand” and start something fresh, she says.
That new brand, of which Powney is founder and creative director, is called Akyn. Why Akyn? The “a”, she says, is for “atelier” and the “kyn” is a play on kinship. It “is very much about the power of community”. Its first collection, which Powney calls “a palate cleanse” launched on Friday. The clothes are elegant and chic; they tap into the same aesthetic that has made the Olsen twins’ The Row tick. There is subtly unusual tailoring, T-shirts that are entirely plain bar a tasselled hem, undemanding dresses with flattering shirring at the waist and Aran knits with the words “peace” and “love” woven into them. “It’s more minimal, it’s more elevated,” she says.
Akyn lands at a time when overproduction remains rife, with 40% of clothes made each year – 60bn garments – unsold. There has also been increased recognition that buying secondhand clothing is not a magic bullet. As the Or Foundation stated in its Stop Waste Colonialism report: “The fashion industry uses the global secondhand clothing trade as a de facto waste management strategy.” Curbing consumption – buying better, buying less – is the real answer.
Does Powney believe there has been a change in attitude? For one thing, she says, the conversation behind the scenes has shifted. In the past, she would talk to suppliers and they would look at her “like I’m absolutely crazy”, because “no one’s ever asked questions before. No one’s ever visited a wool farm and no one has any clue.”
Ten years on, she says it has become more common to ask a supplier: “Is it certified? Can you tell me more about your supply chain?” She says: “We’ve seen a lot of progress in transparency of supply chains or at least having conversations about it.”
The same could be said for the consumer, who, in the past, was largely – it feels fair to say – ignorant about sustainable fashion. Now people are more across the language as well as certain basic premises. They know organic cotton is generally better than non-organic, because it is a lower-impact crop; they know that lyocell, the cellulose-derived fabric made from wood pulp, is better than polyester.
But with these conversations, there have also been complications. “We’ve had a massive peak of sustainability chat in the press and via brands but with that has just come an absolute flurry,” says Powney. That flurry being “uncertainty, misunderstanding, greenwashing, a lack of legislation”.
The chat around sustainable fashion in the past decade also showed what wasn’t possible. Take the example Powney set. If this was what it took to create more ethical clothes, then what hope was there for the wider industry, in general less willing to put in the hard graft? Or for people buying that recycled polyester dress in the hopes of doing a bit better with their fashion choices, but unwilling to alter their shopping habits more deeply? As Powney points out: “Even if you’ve taken a bottle and turned it into a dress, then it’s dead. There’s nothing to do with it and then it’s in landfill and we know it’s not biodegrading.”
Anecdotally, it feels like some despair crept in along the way – the idea that if making ethical buying decisions is so complicated, why even bother?
Powney plans to approach the conversation differently with her new brand. It has become fairly common to see how many litres of water it took to make your jeans, or how many plastic bottles went into your bag. But without some serious expertise, it is impossible to know what any of that really means.
“It’s just a minefield,” she says. “Consumers are so confused. Greenwashing is rife. No one supply chain is the same as the other, which is why capturing data is very hard.” Powney plans to “bring back the narrative of creativity, craftmanship, quality, design,” explaining the amount of work that goes into clothes – “because we’ve lost that in the fast fashion world”.
Given the complexities, it is perhaps all the better to have a figure like Powney who can cut through the noise. She describes her Fashion Reimagined journey as “her learning curve” and mentions things such as “fly striking”, “mulesing”, and “microns” – proof, if any were needed, that it is good to have someone to unpick all this. She applies this knowledge “on every single decision I make”, she says.
The fly in the ointment, though, is affordability. Akyn will be slightly more expensive than Mother of Pearl, where dresses sold for about £300. In the industry, Akyn is still called “affordable luxury”, because, well, it is, compared with other luxury labels. But still.
Of course, everyone can shop more sustainably and cheaply without resorting to fast fashion, given the abundance of secondhand clothes. But is there some hope that prices may come down? For Powney’s brand, no. “I am very small scale and I want to do the fibres correctly and I want people to understand what making real natural organic fibres costs.” But, she adds: “I’m completely choked by being a small business, which means I don’t have power, I don’t have scale.”
Here comes the silver lining. There is, she says, “absolutely no reason why other brands cannot do this at lower prices”. She isn’t, she makes clear, talking about “Shein and Asos and Boohoo … that’s just an absolute no hope because you can’t produce clothes at that price.” But there is hope for high street brands, which have “scale and price”. She continues: “Switching to organic cotton is also a completely doable task.” Plus, she adds: “Luxury brands 150 million per cent should be and can be doing this.”
With Akyn, Powney is reconnecting with her love of style. Speaking about her time at Mother of Pearl, she says: “I lost sight of a little girl who wanted to be a fashion designer.” Now she is back.
