RENEWALMAG.

UNISEX FASHION:

A CHANGING WORLD

WALK TO TALK

FIGHTING MENTAL

WITH FASHIONHEALTH

ISSUE I NOVEMBER 2018

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6

NEWS

RENEWAL brings you the best news stories in the fashion and art world. From fighting mental health with fashion to cruelty free

make-up.

FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS

How Levis became the most desired item in

your wardrobe.

WINTER COATSHaving spent what felt like an eternity basking (sweating profusely) in what we can only imagine was the UK’s (world’s) longest, most intense summer ever, we at RENEWAL couldn’t have been more thrilled with the arrival of winter. If for nothing more than the excuse for a whole new wardrobe...But while new boots, bags, scarves and thick knits are all fun and games, the real sartorial riot happens with outerwear. More specifically: the coat.The great news? If you get it right, you’ll be wearing it all the way from now until February. Less time shopping + less money spent = one v happy gal.But which one is right? Whether you’re after a puffer, a

trench, a teddy or something a little more vinyl, we’ve scoured the lot and made a tight edit of our favourites just for you.

Pull & Bear £49.99

Shearling is trending, and it’s very popular for a casual fall coat. This

cute faux shearling coat is soft and sassy. This coat is so much fun for after work and weekends!

TOPSHOP£65

This blazer-like topcoat delivers a structured, polished feel when you need coverage that is somewhere

between light and heavy.

ZARA £69.99

Time for a new parka? Don’t wait until the first snowflake falls. Parkas have come a long way over the years, and

this cozy puffer jacket is sleek and fashion forward. So much better than

looking like the Michelin Man!

& Other Stories

£170Trend: Softly Belted

Investing in a super sumptuous belted coat was the overriding memo from the autumn/winter

2018 runways. The key takeaways: it should be cinched, oversized enough to hunker down under,

and ankle-grazing in length.

RENEWALSHOPS

4

810 REVIEWS

An art exhibition with a fashionable twist and

Topshop’s new #TopshopIT launch .

A UNISEX WORLD

RENEWAL’sPien Meulensteen

looks at how the fashion world is

changing.

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RENEWALCONTENTS

EDITOR’S NOTE

Welcome to the first issue of RENEWAL magazine: your guide to fashion, culture and what’s trending in the UK. In this issue we discover a whole new world of fashion, a student who’s touring the country with her unique fashion shows and I find a creative way of using a onesie! So, I think it’s about

time we got into it, don’t you think?

Pien MeulensteenEditor

Trending now!

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A student from Manchester is raising thousands of pounds for a mental health charity

by touring city-to-city with her fashion shows.

Phoebe Williams, 21, began organising the fashion road-trip, YourCityinMind, after a close friend, Luke O’Hanlon, killed himself weeks before his 21st birthday.

The introductory catwalk, at Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studio in May, raised over one thousand pounds for mental health charity Mind. A few months later, the organisation doubled that amount at the following event in Leeds.

“Luke’s death really pushed me to go ahead with the fashion show. If it can help someone in a similar situation then that’s the best that can come from it,” Williams told RENEWAL.

“I chose fashion because I lack confidence in other areas and I use it to express my creativity and confidence and I hope my show will allow people to do the same.”

Working with a team of three other directors, the 21-year-old says she has turned her idea into an organisation and is keen to create a bigger platform to widen the discussion around mental

health. “Luke’s death opened our eyes to

how big mental health is in men so it is really important to use what we do as a platform to teach others about this taboo subject,” she continues.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, in 2017, 5,821 suicides were recorded in Great Britain. Of these, 75% were male and 25% were female. They also highlighted that suicide is the most common cause of death for men aged 20-49 years in England and Wales.

Nicola Ash, Senior Community Fundraising Officer for Mind, said: “The money raised through this event will help Mind provide vital support and services to the one in four of us experiencing a mental health problem and help decrease the stigma which sadly still exists around mental health”.

YourCityinMind has made its debut in two northern cities already and the young fashion director has no plans to stop there.

“Leeds was the turning point for me because it went so well. I want to hit

Manchester next because that’s where I’m from, and Luke was too, so all the more reason to celebrate in our home city”.

YourCityinMind comes to Manchester early next year.

IS THE TABOO AROUND MALE MAKE-UP DISAPPEARING?

MANCHESTER STUDENT FIGHTS

MENTAL HEALTH WITH FASHION

CRUELTY-FREE MAKEUP

WHY INDOOR PLANTS MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER

WALK TO TALK:

MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

HEADLINERS

Idris Elba, Skepta and Yoko Ono will be among the artists creating work for Manchester International Festival next year.

The biennial festival will open with another public event in the city centre, following on from last

year’s curtain-raiser What Is The City But The People, which told the stories of 160 ordinary and extraordinary Mancunians as they walked across a catwalk in Piccadilly Gardens.

Internationally acclaimed artist and peace activist Ono will kick off the 2019

programme, gathering communities from across Manchester to ring bells together in

Cathedral Gardens.

Topshop is relaunching its make-up line with newly designed packaging and “Leaping Bunny” cruelty-free certification.

The range was originally discontinued earlier this year and has been running down stock in stores. New products have also been introduced, including 83 shades of lipstick, increasing the size of its beauty range by around five times.

In response to customer feedback, the new range has a more elegant, minimalist look in matte black and gold, and can claim to be free from animal cruelty. Demand for cruelty-free beauty has been growing in recent years. Consumer research company The NPD Group announced in a report in March that cruelty-free beauty brands had grown by 18% in the year to 31 Janaury 2018, compared with overall growth of 7% in the sector.To qualify for the Leaping Bunny

standard, brands must not test on animals or use ingredients that have been tested on animals, and must monitor suppliers to ensure these standards are met, among other criteria.

Louis Vuitton has enlisted Sophie Turner to raise awareness and maximise the

outreach of its #makeapromise campaign in collaboration with Unicef.

The lockit bracelets aid Unicef’s mission to help children in vulnerable situations.With Unicef’s assistance, the Bangladeshi government has been able to vaccinate 900,000 children and adults against cholera and save over 263,000 children from malnutrition. The £100 from each £175 bracelet sold only bolsters these numbers.

SOPHIE TURNER TEAMS UP WITH LOUIS VUITTON TO HELP CHILDREN AT RISK

Houseplants are good for your health — and not just for their visual beauty. Why? They essentially do the opposite of what we do

when we breathe: release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. This not only freshens up the air, but also eliminates harmful toxins. Extensive research by NASA has revealed that

houseplants can remove up to 87 per cent of air toxin in 24 hours. Studies have also proven that indoor plants improve concentration and productivity (by up to 15 percent!), reduce stress levels and boost your mood — making them perfect for not just your home but your work space, too.

At work, place plants, especially those with broad leaves, on your desk; they will help regulate humidity and increase levels of positivity — seeing greenery and nature help us feel more relaxed and calm, which in turn benefits your every day mood. Indoor plants serve a practical and aesthetic purpose, and will enhance your life.

RENEWALNEWS

RENEWALNEWS

A growing number of young men are wearing make-up and big brands are embracing the trend. Could the stigma around

male cosmetics finally be disappearing? Gianni Casagrande began wearing

make-up about three years ago.

The 22-year-old from Middlesbrough says he had “really bad acne” and started using concealer to hide his blemishes.

Impressed by the results, he moved on to wearing a tinted skin primer - or “BB cream” - on nights

out and a brow styling gel to control his “bushy” eyebrows.

“There is definitely still a stigma around men’s make-up, but I think it’s becoming more normal now,” the social media strategist and beauty blogger says.

“A lot more of my friends are wearing it, both gay and straight - it makes you feel a

lot more comfortable and confident.”

With men from popular reality TV shows like Geordie Shore and Made in Chelsea endorsing cosmetics, and beauty bloggers and brands championing the trend, male make-up is in the limelight.

In August, L’Oreal’s UK boss, Vismay Sharma, said it was no longer a taboo for the “selfie generation” to use cosmetics and that we could see male-targeted make-up counters in department stores in “five to seven years”.

Maybelline, a L’Oreal brand, used a male ambassador for the first time in January, casting social media star Manny Gutierrez in a mascara advert.

And a growing number of brands such as Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford sell make-up specifically for men, including “guy-liner” eye pencils, bronzing creams and concealers.

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THE RISE

OF GENDERLESSCLOTHING

Masculinity v femininity

Emanuele Piarulli is working towards that goal. Hustling around a busy Leeds Art University, collecting spare parts for a mannequin that will be his depiction of the perfect silhouette, shows itself to be quite the challenge. Dragging the tail end of the plastic frame through the tight halls on the second floor of the school’s building, Emanuele’s calming nature seems to have vanished as he frantically pins the final pieces of his tailoring project.

“That bit isn’t supposed to flap like that, but you can see what I mean,” he laughs in his soft Italian accent.

Born in the small town of Amalfi, Italy, the rugged coastline is a far cry from the sprawling city of Leeds where the 23-year-old now calls home. “The UK has a history of breaking the rules,” he tells RENEWAL. “When I look at fashion in Italy, I don’t see any concept behind the clothing,” he explains, as he starts to reel off Italian designers I can’t pronounce. Emanuele has always seen himself as the ‘quirky kid’, using his clothing as a way of expressing his rebelliousness within the fashion industry, which is why unisex clothing seems to be his perfect fit.

Through his tailoring projects, he blurs the lines between masculinity and femininity, by constructing his garments on the principles of menswear whilst designing around a feminine silhouette.

“I know this sounds pretentious, but I want to start a mini revolution in menswear.” He’s half joking, but you can feel the steely determination in his voice. We spend a while looking through his designs as he gushes about each one, flicking through a well-uswed scrapbook.

“When I had my first encounter with menswear as a discipline, which sanctioned the beginning of the biggest romance of my life, it came quite natural for me to realise that I could employ my work to contribute to that change that I wanted to see in our society in the way masculinity is perceived and performed,” he explains.

Men in oversized three-piece suits and cropped button-up shirts feature heavily in the young designer’s drawings. “I don’t want people to see my designs as either for a man or a woman,” he continues as he flicks through his iPhone library of photos stopping at an image of a male and female model wearing his design.

“I want to see my designs in a department store under no gender because labels should exist just to show us how an item should be washed without damaging them.”

Although there is little association between Bronte and Emanuele’s designs, their entry into gender-free work is similar; gender simply didn’t matter when they put pen to paper. And both are imagining a world where gender doesn’t exist.

A long journey ahead

To some, it’s an encouraging time for the unisex market, as the binary view of gender appears to be fading. More and more designers are choosing to produce affordable, unisex lines. Selfridges enlisted the services of British designer, Faye Toogood for their Agender campaign last year.

During a Q&A with the department store, she described the paradoxical theme running within the fashion industry: “We are increasingly aware that gender is not a simple binary, yet clothing is still marketed along those lines. You only

have to look at the preponderance of the ‘pink is for girls’ mentality in children’s departments to see how the choices we make when buying clothes can reinforce artificial gender roles.”

Toogood highlights the long journey ahead, using the Agender campaign as more of a social experiment than a

marketing tool. It gives the audience an insight as to what our shopping experiences could entail, whilst also highlighting that there’s still a long way to go until we truly reach a unisex future.

Emanuele’s busy building that future. So busy, that he left me stranded on the outskirts of Leeds to continue working on his “mini revolution”. As I waved goodbye, I remembered what Bronte had told me earlier that day: “It is exciting to think in the future we will be wearing things that haven’t even

been designed yet.”

Pien Meulensteen talks to the students hoping to change the fashion industry for good; one unisex garment at a time.

“I know this sounds pretentious, but I want tostart a mini revolution in menswear.”

“Bald with breasts”.

That’s how Bronte Palmer describes herself after she was diagnosed with cancer

back in 2015. She lost her hair during a cycle of chemotherapy, and that is when she found a passion for creating genderless clothing. “During treatment whilst in a garden centre a young girl perhaps six years old said to her mother: ‘Mummy why does that boy look weird?’ I realised that the young girl was in a situation that challenged her understanding of gender. What she saw did not fit a stereotype of a male or a female.” She tells RENEWAL this is when she first started to create imagery to challenge perceptions of gender, aiming to rewrite the idea of stereotypes and gender norms.

And from that moment on, her clothing line A State of Unisex was born.

“A State of Unisex believes in teaching unity, defying stereotypes, self expression and creating awareness to the concept of challenging gender as I believe the more people are exposed to imagery challenging gender, the more accepted it should become.”

Genderless clothing is not anything new, but as conversations within the industry get louder, hope that it can be truly accepted is growing. As recently as June this year, Vogue posed the question; is the future of fashion gender free? We’ve all seen Lady Gaga in that iconic, oversized pantsuit or Kurt Cobain posing in a flowery dress on the cover of The Face magazine. A number of high-street retailers, such as ASOS, Selfridges and Boohoo, have tentatively entered the unisex market, trying to introduce the idea to a mainstream audience. But, will there ever come a time when we can do away with gendered labels altogether?

A State of Unisex

SHOP UNISEX

Merwe ModeSelfridges

Mevrou & CoThebe Magugu

BoohooASOS

Young And LazySol-Sol

ChampionFila

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HOW A PAIR OF JEANS BECAME THE MOST DESIRED ITEM IN FASHION

The “it” item to be seen wearing at fashion week this season, the most photographed, the *coolest*, the one thing I saw nearly everyone wearing on any

given day, wasn’t a particular Céline shoe or a Fendi bag—it was those vintage (or reworked vintage) Levi’s 501s. And frankly, if I could peg a most-wanted fashion piece to own right now, it would be those Levi’s. That perfectly-fitting pair of not-too-tight, not-too-loose, vintage wash, high-waisted jeans. Those forever jeans you’re meant to wear every other day are now a fashion statement.

The resurgence of the ultimate mom jeans (quite literally, though; they’re the jeans my mom wore throughout the 1980s and ’90s) is unquestionably part and parcel of fashion’s seemingly insatiable appetite for nostalgia and, undoubtedly, its endless obsession with the ’90s in and of itself (again this season!). Who would have thought that the ultimate street style look would be a hybrid of Jessie Spano and The Craft (honestly though, the look is the only thing to want to wear).

The Levi’s that could.

RENEWALTREND

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Remember Art Attack? The children’s TV show that made your parents fear the worst for their paper-white walls?

Paint, everywhere. That’s the CAPSID exhibition in a nutshell. Every nook and cranny of Manchester’s HOME art gallery has been filled with the dramatic, daring and incredibly messy imaginings of artist, Dr John Walter.

But the focus is far from childlike. The exhibition, which opened on the 10th November, blends science with art, hoping to address a “crisis of representation” surrounding human viruses. Named after the outer protein shell of a virus, CAPSID radically explores the lifecycle of HIV whilst raising questions about wider forms of invasion and infection.

The gallery is filled with the music of an offbeat track. Simple, cement blocks, painted wholly in neon greens, pinks and blues, divide the rooms. A tilted television, hooked in the corner next to a painted canvas stretching the width of the wall, with the words ‘Laura’s Mutants’ in what can only be described as a 20-year-old-WordArt-style font, flashes for attention. Everything seems to be slightly off kilter. And it doesn’t get easier; a hooded mannequin, with its outstretched arm, greets passers by as they walk through to the next room. The black, patchwork all-in-

one costume seems slightly subdued amongst its chaotic surroundings. There is an unnerving edge to it.

The mannequin fades from memory, replaced by an epic, carnivalesque room, filled with papier-mâché molecules and rubber stem cells. To call it a sensory experience is an understatement, but that is exactly how Walter imagined his project to be: “I want people to come and let it flood over them,” he said, during a Q and A with a-n. Pom-poms, cheap toys and false breasts are glued with sickly pink foam to the walls of HOME’s ground-floor gallery as the visual equivalent of immunity suppressors. Slipping on a pair of blue shoe overalls, to ensure the huge collaged artwork placed on the floor is kept unspoiled, is the only reminder of reality.

From the epic to the surreal; an array of mannequins are deliberately placed around the next room, each in a customised onesie. Yes, that’s right, a onesie. They are smothered in buttons, embroidery and other haberdasheries. It is an adult dollhouse. As silly as it sounds, and as innocent as the onesie may seem, seeing an army of plastic people dressed as various proteins makes everything seem more real. It is a ridiculous spectacle, like something from a school’s textile project, but Walter’s purposeful simplification of complex science is what

makes it possible to understand the virus. From the first lonely mannequin, almost untouched, to the last, head to toe in buttons, it is the flamboyant, in-your-face clothing that sends the strongest message about the dangers of infection.

‘A Virus Walks Into A Bar’ is the pièce de résistance of CAPSID. It is the last thing to see walking through the gallery, and the most telling. Although the artwork itself provides a multi-coloured and stimulating experience, Walter’s 20-minute film depicts a starker reality. In the soap opera style short, there are drunken locals, pub landlords and bouncers; all dressed in the onesies and all playing out some part in the drama, centred on a pub. The onesies are no longer a school textile project; they are part of the drama being played out, each colour representing different parts of a viral invasion. And so, the film completes the journey through the exhibition, making sense of the bizarre art attack throwback with this tangible metaphor. Walter proves there is

method in his madness.

John Walter’s CAPSID

WHERE: HOME Manchester

WHEN: Sat 10 Nov 2018 – Sun 6 Jan 2019

TIMES: Tues - Sun (12:00 - 20:00)

ADMISSION: Free

MUST SEE

BEAUTY

BYBI Babe Balm 100% natural, vegan and cruelty

free, there isn’t a single winter-induced skin bugbear BYBI’s

Babe Balm can’t resolve. Flaky lips? Gone.

Ragged cuticles? It’s got you. We even use it to keep frizzy lengths on lock-down. The packaging is sugarcane-derived

and plastic free, too, which makes it totally

eco-friendly. RENEWAL loves!

Evolve Organic Beauty Citrus Blend Aromatic Body Wash

In a bid to reduce pollution and waste, Evolve Organic Beauty have switched all of their plastic bottles to 70% post-consumer recycled bottles - and we love them for it. 97% natural and 72% organic, this zingy body wash harnesses plant-based ingredients like coconut and aloe to soothe and comfort skin as it cleanses. A brand to have on your radar for sure.

Rahua Shampoo

Filled to bursting with organic

and 100% natural ingredients, Rahua’s luxe

shampoo cleanses expertly from root to tip without sucking strands of moisture. The smell isn’t overpowering like some shampoos and it’s also sulphate free, so perfect for coloured or keratin-treated hair.

The Power of the Infected Onesie

Crushed velvet suiting,

oversized borg coats and cashmere-infused knitwear

are just some of the pieces making Topshop an autumn fashion hero. Fans of summer’s hit pinafore dress will love its snake print incarnation, along with new season trends arriving in droves

(hello, metallics, jewel hues and bright jumpers). Plus, there’s an injection of

all the classics we rate the brand for – that means great denim,

timeless bikers and smart coats.

“Topshop is an autumn

fashion hero”

#TopshopIT

launch

FASHION

Sustainable Clothing

by Everlane

“Sustainable” has become a catch-all term to describe a better way of producing the clothes that we buy and wear. It’s the antithesis of fast-fashion and that habit of buying a new, cheap top for every night out, which may well fall apart after a couple of washes anyway.

For those of you who turn basics into boldness, Everlane is right up your alley. Their ethically-made and affordable basics come with a twist, whether it’s a little flair in an A-line dress or box-cut tees in stunning colors. Easy to dress up or dress down, they sell both men and women’s apparel along with women’s shoes—their Day Heels are some of the comfiest pumps around, and well worth the investment.

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IN YOUR NEXT

ON SALE 1ST

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