Under the Radar is Highsnobiety's interview series that hones in on young designers and emerging brands to give next-gen talent the platform it deserves.
Designers Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon founded Prototypes in 2021 to go against fashion’s status quo.
Out of their Zurich HQ, Beham and Pidgeon — both Vetements alumni — create Prototypes’ clothes out of upcycled and repurposed secondhand garments. Furthermore, Prototypes wants its wearers to do their part, too.
Prototypes is so sustainably-focused that it freely distributes downloadable manuals and sewing guides from its website, allowing customers to produce their own Prototypes garment from any piece of old clothing.
Though Prototypes encourages the DIY collections, it also produces its own thoughtful seasonal lines.
Prototypes Fall/Winter 2024, plainly titled “Series 06”, pays homage to British football culture’s working class roots and the unsung heroes of football — the groundsman, the kit man, the ball boys — with a provocative retooling of upcycled sportswear from the late nineties and early 2000s. Ironic for clothes originally intended to expire seasonally.
Think loose-fitting joggers tucked into socks tucked into heeled shoes. Hoodies with padded shoulders and integrated face masks. England football jerseys deconstructed and worn as corsets. And if that sounds like something you could make at home, that’s the point.
Highsnobiety: Let’s start from the beginning. How and why did Prototypes come about?
Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon: Prototypes focuses on the principles of upcycling and repurposing. In conceptually interwoven endeavors, we facilitate a sustainable attitude towards making and wearing fashion [through] our ready to wear collections, which make use of deadstock fabric and garments, [and] our Proto Packs, which equip those with the will and desire to do it themselves with a manual guide and sewing patterns to do so.
Proto Packs, which come in different difficulty levels, allow anyone to replicate a style from [our] Second Life line. Anyone can create a hoodie out of two old sweatpants. The DIY guides and patterns from certain styles in our collections will be available as free downloads on our website soon; we are currently working on an overhaul.
You were both already working in the industry, so why did you decide to start your own label?
We realised that the current system of how we produce and consume product needed to be updated. The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries globally. We prefer an approach of regenerating pre-existing material such as deadstock, decommissioned uniforms and vintage garments.
Basically, everything that’s available in abundance is interesting to us. Once sourced, we cut up and decode these items to repurpose them into wearable and “new” garments. Duchamp’s concept of the readymade is important to us [in that it] clearly points to a garment's origin. We want people to make an emotional connection to the origins of a piece in the first five seconds they see it.
Tell us a little about your backgrounds.
Callum [is] originally from the UK, graduated in menswear design at University of the Arts London and worked previously for Martine Rose and Vetements. Laura [is] originally from Germany and joined the Vetements team in Paris at a young age, before moving to Zurich [where Vetements is based]. We actually met while sharing a desk there for several years.
Where does Prototypes fit into the current fashion landscape?
Reworking, upcycling, and working in ways which are environmentally sustainable are growing sectors in the fashion industry and the constantly rising interest in Prototypes clearly shows this as well. We’re one of the first brands fully committed to creating high fashion and taking [eco-consciousness] seriously without greenwashing their brand. Sustainability truly is part of our core identity as a fashion label.
Otherwise, we are not really interested in following trends or commenting on what other brands are doing.
What’s the eventual goal with Prototypes?
Since the beginning it has all been about educating the consumer to become [their own] producer and supplier, which is as sustainable as it could get. Everyone has old garments in their wardrobe that can be given a new purpose. It’s important to understand the process that goes into making clothes: it takes time and thinking. Clothes should not be disposed of or disregarded as quickly as they are in today’s society.
We want to ultimately elongate the lifecycle of any given garment without being bothered by a short-lived and capitalist logic of trends. Strategies of upcycling and repurposing are as important to us as accessibility, so we’ll continue pushing both.
