International Woolmark Prize winner Colovos launches its everyday wear collection

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6th Sep 2019

Nicole and Michael Colovos picked up this year’s International Woolmark Prize for Womenswear back in February. Finalists were tasked with producing a collection made entirely from Australian merino wool, but the Colovoses went further and designed a sustainable collection: choosing responsibly farmed and produced wools, sending production scraps to a facility that breaks down the fiber with steam and citrus to be re-spun into new yarn, and using recycled materials for the trim, button, labels, and hangtags.

Not only that: the hangtags will be printed with QR codes that provide the backstory for each garment. “As a brand,” says Nicole, “it’s important for us, the idea of making clothes that have meaning behind them.”

The husband-and-wife designers (and former Helmut Lang creative directors) had taken sustainable steps in previous seasons—sourcing fabric made from recycled ocean plastic, rejecting leather and fur in favor of faux varieties—but this collection marks the first time they approached the issue so holistically. “We’re not trying to preach,” says Michael. “We’re just trying to show you can make a collection just as high fashion as anything out there in a way that’s zero waste and non-harmful.”

The lineup includes a field jacket, a puffer, a wrap dress, high-waisted trousers, a blazer, a button-down, and a ribbed knit dress. In shades of looks-like-denim-but-isn’t-denim blue, each piece is simple and wearable, but elevated enough that it doesn’t qualify as a basic or essential. Consider the rib knit dress. It’s 100 percent wool, which typically can’t go in the washing machine.

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Image credit: Colovos

This wool can because each strand has been shaved of its scales, which prevents the shrinking typically caused by heat and moisture. Elsewhere, a process that stretches the yarn as it’s woven ensures that the wool used for the field jacket and puffer is completely waterproof. This is dry, technical stuff, requiring not a little amount of research, but the results are compelling and effortless.

Next steps, the Colovoses plan to incorporate their learnings into future collections—in fact, their resort offering will ship in a few months with the recycled labels and hangtags they developed for this one. “Ideally for us, we’d be zero waste and zero emissions,” Michael begins. “Emissions we couldn’t eliminate we’d offset by giving money to plant more trees. We’d be cradle to cradle, take things back, and anything we created from recycled or post-consumer waste—stuff that used to just get thrown away—we’d donate all that money to charity. That’s where we’d like to go.”