‘Clothes should last longer than you': Designer Roksanda Ilinčić on how to dress sustainably
'I come from Serbia and the culture there is quite sustainable,' Ilinčić explains.
'You know, we don't buy many clothes, we don't throw the clothes away. It's very natural that clothes last almost longer than you!'
'When I grew up, we were not an over-consuming society, so somehow it's embedded in me already. So these [sustainable initiatives] are not unusual to me at all, because it's very normal to pass clothes from grandmother to mother to daughter. [Clothes] become an emotional part of you – it's not about wearing it for one season and then checking out.
'That's where the timelessness in my designs comes from.'
The Serbian-born designer established her namesake brand in 2005, and quickly became known for her bold, smart and sculptural approach to womenswear.
Roksanda gowns are worn by everyone from the Princess of Wales to Anne Hathaway and Cate Blanchett, as her sleek yet vibrant designs are fit for royals and Hollywood A-listers alike.
Ilinčić's sustainable ethos is also a key selling factor for her clientele.
Her latest autumn/winter 2025 collection, which debuted at London Fashion Week, was part of a collaboration with Dylon Detergent. The textile dye company explored the concept of 'Rethink New' with Roksanda, and how caring for your clothes properly can help shape a sustainable future of fashion.
'This show was inspired by the late British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, and in the heart of her practice was actually using old, discarded objects – pieces that didn't have any meaning – and giving them a new life,' explains Ilinčić.
'Barlow incorporated lots of recycled wood, MDF, polystyrene, sponges, duct tapes, cardboard [into her artwork]. And I love that idea of looking into something that is very often overlooked – that is left to die – and painting it a new life.'
Ilinčić used Dylon colour dyes in her most recent runway collection, reviving old fabrics from past collections.
Referring to one colour-blocked dress, 'You can see [the dress's] colour blocking, very much part of my design DNA, but it's also combining different textures [such as] the black fabric which was one of my core fabrics that I used to use in almost every season.
'It was a true pleasure to reuse something to come up with something new.'
When asked about how one can start sourcing preloved pieces if they're used to fast fashion purchases, Ilinčić drew attention to the emotional connection people have with clothing.
'I think it's very important to buy pieces that you really love, that you really appreciate. It starts with a conscious purchase of investing in something that is going to have longevity from an emotional perspective, and then, of course, caring about it.
'I still have some dresses, for example, that I took from my mum – and I think making sure that you love [the piece] means that care will come naturally.
'You will make sure that it's in the best condition, taken to the best cleaners [and making sure they] are washed with the best products. So yes, it starts with the emotional connection you have with the piece that you buy. Ask yourself: Why am I buying this?'
How one cares for their clothes in order to increase their longevity is becoming a growing trend in the sustainable fashion space.
'Wash your clothes at a lower temperature,' proclaims fellow panellist and deputy director of the Institute for Positive Fashion, Shailja Dube.
'That was one of the things that was quite interesting when we did our research in our Enabling Garment Longevity report, that actually just going from, say, 40 degrees to 30 degrees makes a big difference, alongside spot cleaning.'
'It's not about changing everything at once,' says Ilinčić, 'it's about small, constant steps.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Judy Loe obituary: actress best known for her role in Morse
In March 1979, the actress Judy Loe was in hospital recovering from a minor operation. Her husband, the sitcom star Richard Beckinsale, came to visit her with their five-year-old daughter, Kate. Later, Loe vividly recalled standing at the door of her room watching her husband walk down the corridor after the visit was over. It was the last time she saw him. The following day, a doctor had to break the news to her that 31-year-old Beckinsale had died in the night of a heart attack. 'Immediately it was like being in a long tunnel,' Loe recalled. 'I was in a vacuum. All I could hear was my heart pounding, pounding, pounding.' Barely able to absorb the news, she had to steel herself to tell Kate about her father's death. In the awful weeks to come, she was buoyed by her daughter and by the hundreds of letters she received from fans of Richard. She determined that she must be positive and not let widowhood define her. Judith Margaret Loe was born in Urmston, Lancashire, in 1947, the only child of Norman Loe, a travelling salesman, and his wife Nancy (née Jones), a department store worker. A bright child, she attended Urmston Grammar School for Girls from 1958 to 1964, and was head girl for her final year. She also showed talent as a performer. According to a local newspaper review of the school's 1963 production of Hansel and Gretel: 'Any doubts one might have had of the school's ability to stage the opera effectively were dissipated as soon as fifth former Judith Loe (Gretel) had stepped onto the stage and burst into song … Throughout the performance she displayed supreme confidence and great promise.' Uncertain if she wanted to commit to acting, Loe studied drama and English at the University of Birmingham, reasoning that she could teach if she decided against a stage career. In 1968, after completing her degree, she joined a repertory company being assembled by Ted Craig, the new artistic director at Crewe Theatre. The recent Rada graduate Richard Beckinsale was another of Craig's recruits. Beckinsale's wife had recently left him and his friend told Loe that he needed someone to talk to. It was not love at first sight; at least, not for Loe. Beckinsale was 'an Eric Morecambe clone', she told Radio 4's Great Lives. 'He was a sort of shambling kind of a guy with thick, heavy, horn-rimmed glasses.' However, they started talking, became friendly and then 'it all got a bit difficult because I started to fall in love with this man'. The young actors became an item. Despite Loe's initial reservations about his appearance, Beckinsale did not lack female admirers and was thought quite the catch. However, the elegant Loe was also considered a beauty. They were an attractive couple and appeared together in a number of productions, even playing newlyweds in All in Good Time. When the rep season ended, work separated the pair and they were restricted to meeting at weekends. While working at Chester's Gateway Theatre, Loe successfully auditioned for a role in the West End musical Hair, notorious for a brief scene in which the cast appeared naked. She and Beckinsale started living together in a run-down bedsit opposite Holloway prison. In 1970, after a nine-month stint in Hair, she landed a part in a new children's fantasy series called Ace of Wands, ITV's answer to Doctor Who. She played Lulli, the assistant to Tarot, a psychic magician with whom she shared a telepathic connection. According to the show's press release, Lulli was 'young, beautiful, intelligent' and had studied philosophy at Oxford but the part was largely 'decorative', Loe recalled. 'I was allowed some intelligence, but was always having to be rescued by the man.' Loe became pregnant in 1972. The couple were in no hurry to marry, aware that people would consider it a 'shotgun marriage'. 'We were getting on so well,' Loe told Woman magazine. 'Our love was developing so beautifully. Marriage couldn't make it better.' Their daughter, Kate, was born in July 1973. By this time, Beckinsale's television sitcom career had started to take off with The Lovers (1970-71) which was also made into a film. Shortly after Kate's birth came Rising Damp and Porridge (both 1974-77). Loe took her foot off the gas with regard to her own career. The couple had a quiet register office wedding in the spring of 1977. They were trying for another baby and Loe was in hospital for fertility treatment when Beckinsale died. As a young single mother, she had to reignite her career. Six months after her husband's death, she returned to the stage in Middle Age Spread at the Lyric Theatre. ''This play is vitally important for me,' she told an interviewer. 'I'm now a woman on my own with my six-year-old daughter Katie to look after and I've damned well got to be ambitious and make good. 'I have never been a domestic wife who believes that I must give up all for home and husband but at the same time I felt Richard needed a secure home. He hated it when I was away for long and of course Katie needed a stable home life so I didn't push my career as hard as I shall have to do now.' In fact, there was little pushing required. She was popular in the business and with audiences and much in demand. Her television work included Missing From Home (1984), a thriller series in which she played a woman whose husband goes out one day and doesn't return. She was in Singles, a sitcom about the patrons of a singles bar (1988-91). She played the GP wife of Tim Piggott-Smith's chief constable in The Chief (1989-91). She was Commander Kathryn McTiernan, in charge of a multinational crew on the space station Unity in the Sky sci-fi series Space Island One (1998), and had a recurring role in the hospital drama Casualty and its spin-off Holby City. In 1999 she took a role in Sitting Pretty, a play by Amy Rosenthal, at the Chelsea Centre, London. The director Jake Murray recalled: 'It was a fringe show that paid very little. An actress of Judy's calibre didn't need to do a fringe show, nor did she have to read for an unknown director, but she did. She had no ego, no vanity and didn't use her reputation or status as a weapon in the rehearsal room. She was superb to work with, utterly professional, highly intelligent and superlative on stage.' She played Adele Cecil, the love interest of the lead character in two late episodes of the celebrated crime series Inspector Morse. It is Adele who works out that Morse's first name is Endeavour — a long-kept secret in the show. Loe's final television appearance was a small role in the Harlan Coben thriller Fool Me Once (2024). In 1997, she married her long-term partner, the television director Roy Battersby. He died last year. Loe's own death was announced by her film star daughter Kate, to whom she was very close. On Instagram, Beckinsale posted that her mother was: 'the compass of my life … my dearest friend'. Judy Loe, actress, was on born March 6, 1947. She died of cancer on July 15, 2025, aged 78
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘We made it our catwalk': the photos showing Black British women's Saturday night fashion through the ages
Before the beat drops, there is first the bedroom. A hot comb sizzling fresh from the stove, the gentle whirring of a sewing machine. A group of women cross-legged on the floor, swapping clothes and gossip: who got turned away at the club door last weekend? Who might show up tonight? For the London-based archivist Deborah Carnegie, there is something atavistic and sacred about the pre-night out ritual, in particular for Black British women. It is the subject of her latest work, a photography archive spanning 1950 to the present day, chronicling Black British women's Saturday night fashion across the decades. Presented for the first time at this summer's London College of Fashion's Fashioning Frequencies exhibition, Carnegie's collection is the result of months spent gathering images from family photo albums, nightclub photographers' archives and submissions from friends. (The show has now closed; Carnegie is looking for a new venue to show her photos.) We're meeting for lunch at Jumbi, one of south-east London's extant African-Caribbean bars (and a spot I have spent many an evening in, in my Saturday night best; at night it is transformed into a sea of swaying bodies and rum punches under ambient red lights.). 'I used to go out round here all the time back in my day,' Carnegie says over plantain and jerk rice. 'It's nice that places like this still exist. 'For so long our style has been disparaged as 'ghetto',' she says. In the 90s, Carnegie studied fashion as an undergraduate in Surrey. 'My teachers at college used to ask me: 'Who's going to wear this?' And I would think: 'I've already got clients!'' Carnegie's work is a paean to a community whose influence on the country's fashion she feels has gone underacknowledged. But the subject is personal as well as academic. Growing up in the 60s, she lived with her great-aunt, who ran a nightclub in the cellar of their south London flat. 'I'd be in the living room and see guests going downstairs in their fur coats – hair done, jewellery on – and the men in their pinstripe suits and trilby hats,' she says. 'My auntie's rule was that you had to get dressed up if you wanted to go downstairs.' Her great-aunt came to the UK from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation, and was one of the Britons who helped lay the foundations of a Black British aesthetic. Combining fabrics inspired by Africa, the Caribbean and the UK, there was noticeably more colour in their palettes, compared with the pallid austerity of postwar Britain. At the time, it was seen as outre. The Thurrock Gazette reported in 1948: 'Dressed in an odd assortment of clothes, many wearing ties of dazzling designs, over 450 Jamaicans arrived at Tilbury Docks on the Empire Windrush.' 'Colour wasn't as popular in the UK, so we used to make our own outfits out of materials for tablecloths: the greens, blues, oranges,' Carnegie says; they were 'inspired by the front rooms in the Caribbean'. Money was an issue but no obstacle to style. 'Back in the day, we just made our clothes ourselves,' she says. 'We were poor, and most of the dresses didn't fit our bodies anyway – we had big tits and big bums – so clothes here just didn't fit us right.' There is a warm familiarity in the images. We may not be hot-combing our hair and reupholstering tablecloths any more, but there is still a thread of continuity running through the 70 years of nightlife documented in Carnegie's archive, whether it's getting ready to step on to the linoleum of a 1950s blues night, or a 2000s Afrobeats weekender. 'Hair is still a focal point,' she says, 'and dressing head-to-toe: the lashes, the nails, too.' Black British women remain, according to Carnegie, tastemakers when it comes to fashion. You only need to look at the pervasiveness of trainer culture, oversized hoops or the slick-back bun in recent years to see her point. 'That has always been the way,' she says. 'When I was growing up, I never saw Black women on the runway or in magazines. But we've always been at the forefront. When we weren't allowed in those spaces, we made Saturday night our catwalk.' A photo of Carnegie's great-aunt on her wedding day in 1956, this portrait resists tradition. Instead of a white dress, she wore a bespoke suit tailored by her dressmaker, its neat buttons lending elegance and definition, her hair pressed with a hot iron. 'She didn't want a traditional white wedding,' says Carnegie. 'The buttons really make the suit and define the look.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Carnegie's mother, Beverley, stands outside Wandsworth town hall on her wedding day in 1973. Her broad-brimmed hat was inspired by Bianca Jagger, her pearl necklace chosen to match her engagement ring. 'She found the dress at a boutique in Wimbledon,' Carnegie says. 'The platform shoes gave her height. My mum has always inspired my style.' This portrait of Yvonne Pendley, a relative of Carnegie's cousin, was taken just months after she gave birth, in 1974. 'She was happy to get her figure back,' Carnegie says. Dressed in a vibrant yellow suit borrowed from her cousin, with her own shoes and careful grooming, Yvonne posed for a formal portrait before heading out for the evening. Dionne Pendley, Yvonne's niece, was heading to a gig in 1993 when this picture was taken. 'It might've been Jodeci or Boyz II Men,' Carnegie says. Dionne adapted a leather jacket into a dress, borrowed the hat from a friend and paired it with Italian boots. It is quintessential 90s. Taken in 2001, Carnegie, (far right), her sister Sam (second from left) and their friends are shown waiting at a bus stop in Wandsworth on their way to Notting Hill carnival. Carnegie made both her and Sam's outfits – Sam's from Ethiopian fabric, and her own from a faux-leather dress. 'I don't think we came back until the next day!' Carnegie says. Singer Dainá Murel poses at her dancehall-themed birthday party in east London, in 2023. The photo captures the 2020s evolution of Black British women's fashion, but calls back to the 90s dancehall era. 'The flamboyant, ostentatious attire, adorned with fluorescent organza and Lycra, cutout clothing and luminous coloured wigs galore – it reminds me how important the subculture was,' says Carnegie.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Ross King brings foot bath to first day of Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals in a bid to avoid sore toes
It was only the first day of Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals yesterday – but some of the show's class of 2025 are already making sure their feet remain in pristine condition. Good Morning Britain and Lorraine's Los Angeles reporter Ross King even took a £30 Revlon Pediprep spa with him to the London studios. The device promises a 'relaxing, bubbling foot massage'. It is well known that celebrity contestants on the BBC show suffer bruises and lost toenails as they compete for the glitter ball trophy. King, 63, was joined at the rehearsals by his new co-stars, including former England rugby captain Chris Robshaw, 39, and La Voix, 45, star of RuPaul 's Drag Race UK and broadcaster Dani Dyer, 29, daughter of ex-EastEnders star Danny. Meanwhile, former England women's footballer Karen Carney, 38, and Game of Thrones actor Kristian Nairn, 49, were yesterday announced to complete the line-up of the new series, which starts next month on BBC One. Nairn, who stands at 6ft 9ins, is perhaps the show's tallest contestant ever. He played Hodor in the HBO fantasy series and is also known for his role as Wee John Feeney in the HBO comedy Our Flag Means Death. Amongst the celebrities gearing up for practice was former The Apprentice star Thomas Skinner [right] Among the celebrities gearing up for practice was former The Apprentice star Thomas Skinner, who earlier in the day had hit back at 'woke' critics complaining of his signing to the show. Critics had demanded the BBC revoke his invite to join Strictly Come Dancing 2025 because he met JD Vance, with some Strictly fans bombarding the Beeb with complaints and vowing to boycott the show. Taking to X on Friday, Thomas, 34, addressed the backlash, penning: 'Some call me 'controversial,' but I think it's just a dig at normal, hard-working people if I'm honest. But we don't let that stop us. We keep going, we look out for each other, and we use it to drive us forward.' In his message, he shared his excitement as heading filming Strictly for the first time, noting he was 'proud as anything', before thanking his fans for their support. Thomas also revealed he has to 'keep the wheels' and work as he's got three kids and a wife to support, before cheerfully signing off and inviting anyone local to have 'a pint' with him later. The businessman flashed a dazzling smile as she climbed out of his car and joined his fellow stars for the start of their Strictly journey. Meanwhile, the Strictly Come Dancing professional dancers were on fine form as they too arrived, led by Dianne Buswell. The flame-haired beauty was certainly in great spirits as she turned up alongside the likes of Nancy Xu and brand new pros Alexis Warr and Julian Caillon. Meanwhile, Nadiya Bychkova was seen for the first time since her horror fall earlier this week. The Ukrainian dancer, 35, was reportedly taken to hospital on Tuesday after falling and landing on her back during rehearsals. The star was training in north London when she was left in agony after injuring her back, with crew forced to phone an ambulance. However, after updating her fans on her condition, the blonde bombshell was back to her best as she joined her fellow pros for rehearsals.
