PROTOTYPES: Recycling the Future of Fashion
Upcycling, deadstock and eating brand’s waste: Zurich-based, design duo Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon AKA Prototypes are disrupting the fashion industry
Laura & Callum by Vitali Akimov
Sustainability within the fashion industry remains a hotly debated topic. In recent years many have argued over the degree of responsibility held by major brands in curtailing the environmental ramifications of an industry, that for many decades has thrived on over-production and almost limitless selection and choice.
Annually, the fashion industry alone produces over 1.92 million tonnes of textile waste — the equivalent of a truckload of clothes hitting a landfill each second — with very little slowdown in sight. Yet there is a growing awareness within the younger generation of the implications of such waste, reflected in an increasing demand for alternative solutions to fast fashion and endless collections.
Prototypes is a Zurich-based brand that is offering one such solution. Through their innovative concept of upcycling and repurposing dead stock garments, the brand has created a series of collections that have taken no shortcuts when it comes to creating edgy, hard-hitting fashion pieces, all the while keeping sustainability at their core.
Their Protopacks — DIY manuals filled with their designs and sewing patterns — offer an approach that is pulling the curtain back from the once mysterious fashion industry and creating a new generation of fashion followers who are taking control of their clothing consumption —without compromising either flair or style.
GATA recently landed in Paris for fashion week, and had the chance to catch up with the creative duo behind the brand; designers, Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon. Touching on their formative years working at Vetements, as well as creative collaborations with Kanye West, and the importance of grassroots footballing communities, Prototypes is writing a powerful story that is shaking up our perceptions of how fashion should be experienced.
GATA: Thank you so much for your time. Could you introduce Prototypes to the GATA audience and the people who don’t know you yet?
Callum: Prototypes is a brand that we set up together back in 2021, the whole ethos being upcycling and using materials that already exist.
Laura: It’s a truly sustainable brand, not just having some sort of eco-friendly little thing behind it. We wanted to build a brand that is sustainable and doesn’t follow the current path of the industry — which just creates without thinking about what happens to the clothes they don’t sell. The industry can’t work or can’t continue as it is right now and due to that we thought about what brand we would like to put out there, and we knew that we don’t like to make a product just for the sake of a new product and that there are different ways of making a new product.
Callum: I think it was about setting up a brand that was solving a problem and the problem being: the amount of waste that this industry produces. For us this waste isn’t seen as waste, but actually as a material that we can work on and work with.
Laura: In that sense, Prototypes was supposed to be a “prototype” of a new idea, of a new concept that we’re still testing out. Within Prototypes we have a few different lines. The very first idea that we knew we wanted to do was the DIY line, where we thought about what was the most sustainable way of making clothes, by encouraging other people to make their own clothes. We wanted to encourage, share knowledge, get rid of ownership and not put our stamp on it, but say “hey this is what you can make out of two pairs of sweatpants at home and please go ahead and do it!” After that we added the second line which was “Second Lifeline". It’s our ready-to-wear line, where we 100% up-cycle, so whether it’s the labels or the packaging, it’s all sustainable, or biodegradable and made from dead stock fabric rolls.
GATA: So who is behind the brand?
Laura: It’s me and Callum. It’s us. I think I’m still getting used to speaking about us. We met around eight years ago while working at Vetements. We started Prototypes not for the sake of getting our faces out there, but our voices.
Callum: We shared a desk at Vetements and we left around the same time. I think we both had something to say and wanted to just create it from that, and lockdown enabled us to do that because nothing was going on. We had an empty studio to ourselves where we could put our heads together and actually build the foundations of this thing, and ever since then it's been like a snowball effect — now that it's rolling, it's just non-stop.
GATA: Why is DIY so important to you?
Laura: I think DIY is important because we have a responsibility to make aware the fact that the industry the way it works right now, is not really going well. I think there's an educational aspect actually that is needed to shape this awareness, so by encouraging people to make their own clothes; we as the brand step away from this whole notion of ownership. It's not just Prototypes, it's not just what we sell, but whatever people would make too and by making your own clothes, I think everyone will notice that there's much more behind it than they would assume and that clothes have to be valued and cherished and they have emotion.
Callum: I think the DIY aspect of what we try to focus on is educating how it can be done. I don't think we focus much on gatekeeping the idea of how we got to the final design. So if we found a new way of making a hoodie from two pairs of sweatpants, why not share that information and share that process with people so that they can do it themselves?
Laura: We wanted to offer everyone the chance to wear prototypes, and if you can't buy it because it's too expensive, we just wanted to give you the opportunity to make your own. It’s encouraging people to do what they like and make their own version of it — their own vision. It's their interpretation and ideally, we want to build out of these DIY packs a platform where you can download the patterns or the instructions from our website and upload later the result and get visibility through that as well.
I think it’s important to take care of the new generation which is growing up right now and to show them that there's a different way of approaching fashion and this way is super important to just be a bit more aware of what fashion does. It's after all the second worst thing that happens to the planet and in the end nobody needs another new fucking T-shirt, nobody does. We're selling emotions at the end with clothes — there’s no necessity for having a T-shirt otherwise we would die; it's not the case.
“With factories, it’s more expensive to upcycle, than to actually freshly produce clothing; which I think is very very sad.”
GATA: Postal worker’s outfits, police attire, and football jerseys it seems there is a thematic vein that runs through all your work. What was the inspiration behind this common theme?
Callum: I think a large part of the process is sourcing the deadstock to use as material, and seeing what's out there in abundance. So usually there's a lot of like decommissioned uniforms: police, army, so it's about just buying those things and trying to transform them into something that makes sense.
Laura: I mean transform it into what we would like to wear we're coming from the working class, we’re coming from the average middle class at the end of the day.
Callum: My mum used to make my Halloween costumes as well as my costumes for World Book Day. Her uniform, when she was working at Homebase — which in the UK is like this garden centre, was this really green uniform like pants and a shirt. She didn’t work there anymore so she cut it up into little triangles and stuff like that and made a Peter Pan costume. I think just growing up with that, you know hand me downs, and associating with how you can sort of modify what you see around yourself. You know no one should be afraid to put a pair of scissors through something if they can turn it into something else…
Laura: You know we’re playing with a bit of an archetype for this collection, where it’s connected with a positive feeling that unites people. Football is a sport that’s accessible to anyone, it’s not like let’s say golf or tennis, which are sports that not everyone can play, they’re kind of exclusive to a certain group of people in society. These things like football, helped us get through our teenage years, it was all about youth and the energy where the world is open to you, and you can decide where you want to go.
I would say that football is a really cool theme right now, and people are doing this football trick over and over again, however, that isn’t authentic in our opinion. There is so much more behind it. There’s a whole society behind it. First of all, to make it even possible to play there is the groundskeeper, you need the goalie, and the referee. All of these whether they are cool or uncool, actually are archetypes, which are not limited to a premier league football player. I think we wanted to highlight like everything, there is a character aspect to society that forms football in the end.
Photos by Raphael Bliss, Series 06
“I think football shirts are in general, garments that are mass-produced merchandise. Millions of them get made each year with new kit sponsors and that’s what the team has to play in. It’s another garment that is just in abundance.”
GATA: As we’re talking about football, why don’t we talk about your latest collection?
Callum: I think it's something that's always been ingrained in my research or approach to design, and it’s something that I’ve been playing pretty much all my life, and at a good standard, if you believe me or not. There was just so much to take from it and that's why I think that collection sort of focused on the community based around grassroots football. It was a characterisation of that memory of growing up and playing the sport.
Going back to the club I played for for the last collection was great. We were able to rent out the entire pitch, the changing rooms, we could put the floodlights on. A lot of drinks went through the bar to the production and hair and makeup team and all that stuff and in return there was no rental fee or anything like that — as I was hoping because I did score a few goals for them back then.
Laura: They gave us a tour through the whole building and showed us the jerseys and then when we saw that the women's football team needed new kits too, we were like okay let’s do that. Let’s give back to the community and let's support the women’s football team in Long Buckby and have them all wear Prototypes; help them get the boiler fixed and all of these little things, rather than just dropping money or taking their language and not thinking of what to give back.
Photos by Raphael Bliss, Series 06
“We have to have responsibility, all of us. We need to give the new generation something to look up to and work for, to encourage and to prove to everyone: you can come from nothing and make a fashion brand and you can make it sustainable.”
GATA: Let's talk about your choices of material. How much of your design process is affected by the limitations of the deadstock; do you simply work with what’s available or do you have a lot of freedom and choice with what you select and the final designs?
Laura: I think it's both. I mean I think we work with what we’re drawn to, what our eyes like but in the end it's very important to work or to design with a material that you know you can replicate or that exists in multiples of.
In the beginning, we had [an abundance of] ties, as I think nobody wears ties nowadays anymore; but for over 50 years they were produced in mass because every man was wearing one. What do you do with all of these ties nowadays? They're just literally rotting in the corner or in landfills. I mean the form follows the function, so the piece you work with gives you inspiration and leads you to what you can design out of it.
Callum: A lot of the materials we were using are government issue standard, like these police uniforms — they’re made to last. With these materials, you know everything's intact in terms of the seams and the quality of the garment. So I think it's also important that when we transform these pieces we have to be quite thorough in how we translate it with factories. We have to work with factories that are creative and open to the idea of being a bit more hands-on with these pieces.
GATA: Is it you who sources the materials or is someone else doing it?
Laura: The hand-picking, is a design task in my opinion. Together with our design team, we hand-pick those pieces, so that's something we for sure would never give out of hand because, at the end of the day, the base material defines so much of the final piece — so we need to love or have a good eye for what we pick.
Then there are styles for example, denim; after a certain quantity of denim, once you sell them it gets too much for us personally or for our design team to hand-pick them, so we work with dead stock warehouses and they have a certain rule of charge by measurements and by colour but those will be handpicked by us or by someone in the team. Yeah, it’s a lot of hands touching the product before it becomes the final piece.
Callum: I mean in the earlier days we were sifting through hundreds and hundreds of denim jeans. We were full of denim up to the ceiling, we would just crawl on top of clothes trying to find the right size of denim you actually would like to use or the right colour. There’s a lot that goes into the product and I think it’s better now that we're buying more in bulk because we're sort of building inventories out of all the materials that we want to use, but a lot of time goes into the hand-picking process of choosing the final base material to recreate from.
GATA: Let's go back to the past after working for Vetements you guys founded prototypes, what was the journey like when you started prototypes and like why you decide to start the brand together?
Laura: We shared a mindset, we loved working together as a team already and after we left, the pandemic started. We were locked down, and we both just really had to go into ourselves and think about: what we wanted to do, what this job meant to us and how we would like to continue doing this job.
There was no brand out there that I really wanted to work for after Vetements so we said, well let’s make our own and see how this goes and from there, we basically started off in Callum’s kitchen. I remember the first meeting we had in Callum’s kitchen in Zurich, we tried to come up with the logo and the concept. We had so many fights about this and the different directions we could go and when we finally got through to the point where we both agreed, it felt so right.
Callum: I think going back to what you mentioned of our time at Vetements; I think the process there that we learned under Demna was always very hands-on so that was already there.
Laura: He always said he's a dressmaker, not a designer.
Callum: He's always been a great mentor for us and there were times at Vetements, when we would cut up and work with vintage items. I remember a very early rendition of the sweatpants hoodie that was made and it was sent off to a jersey factory in Portugal. No disrespect, one of the best jersey factories in the world, but when this prototype came back it just wasn’t the same you know. You can’t tell it’s been made out of sweatpants anymore. I think, that the original sample, just looked better. It was worn in and it had a different material and a different weight, and I think it just created more character about the garment. I think we just wanted to focus on that and see if we could bring it to market, which has been a challenge but it’s getting there.
GATA: What was the first piece that you guys did together that you were just like, “Yeah we have it now.”?
Laura: The sweatpants hoodie, tank top-long sleeve and tablecloth dress. These were the first three protopacks. We sent out all of these designs to our friends and family just to test out the idea of “Does this work for you guys?” Does this make sense?” We had picture instructions for step one and step two and we put them into different levels of difficulty. The tablecloth dress was beginner-level. For the tablecloth dress you literally had to just cut three holes and two slits and that’s it; so even people who couldn’t sew could make it. The intermediate one was the sweatpants hoodie — out of two sweatpants you could make one hoodie and then we had a crazy difficult one, the tank top long sleeve. I tried last month to do one again and thought oh my god that's difficult actually. I think we need to update the instructions because there’s actually a better way to do it now.
PROTOPACK 01
GATA: Your past collections are reminiscent of the people we grew up with. The Baracuta-wearing skinhead, the edgy e-girl, the passionate football fan. Do you feel the same way looking back at the collections you’ve created?
Callum: I think it's important. From my personal experience someone to mention would be Martine Rose. She was always an advocate and she's very good at making it personal. I think you have to go back to a memory or a time or, you know, to make it personal. And she does that very well. Just going back to shooting at the football club I used to play for. It was just ticking the box for that, but also we had a lot of work based around that concept and we wanted to do that. I think it rattled me a little bit when I saw comments being made that we're appropriating: grassroots, working class, football culture, but you know, the reality is that's what I came from, that's what I grew up with. A little old town in England.
GATA: What do you think it's about the work that you all created that is resonating with people?
Laura: It’s the readymade [aspect] I think. Yeah. It's like when you look at a Duchamp’s readymade artwork piece, you know? When you see it with Prototypes, when we show our pieces, you see where they're coming from. “Ah that used to be a pair of sweatpants. Ah that used to be a tablecloth.” It's about keeping the fun in our collection, and the simpleness of, not trying to hide where it's coming from. We're not trying to make a leather skirt look like PVC or the other way around. We're trying to work with the material, what it was, and keep that energy within that piece — but turn it into something new.
GATA: And people see something that wasn't that cool to wear, now becoming cool to wear.
Laura: We hope with prototypes too, the design language is quite unisex. We try to create pieces that don't have a gender [to them]. Of course, we make a few dresses. Is a dress something that defines, like, a gender nowadays? No, I don't think so.
Callum: I think a general rule that we try to stick to that can be difficult is: I do believe that you can over-design something. You want people to understand, to make that connection, [understand] where it came from or what it was made from, within the first, two or three seconds. I think, I think we've had times before, or designs before, where we've, like, chopped into it too much, and you kind of don't realise that it used to be something at all.
“I think it rattled me a little bit when I saw comments being made that we’re appropriating: grassroots, working class, football culture, but you know, the reality is that’s what I came from, that’s what I grew up with. A little old town in England.”
GATA: How do you see the fashion industry evolving in the next few years? What do you think is cool and what do you think sucks right now about the industry?
Callum: I think the upcycling element needs to arrive in the big houses. I think Prototypes, working on this — as far as we have so far — are ahead of the curve on that. But I think it's also time for others to try and make themselves more sustainable as brands. Especially as there are new government restrictions on how much stock you're able to burn. So a lot of these big brands incinerate their unsold items in their dead stock. Now that they're not allowed to do that anymore, it’s an opportunity where we can start adapting this idea.
Laura: Shaping awareness. Allowing the consumer to have a bit of a look behind the curtain, behind this whole idea. The industry itself for me is a bit of an issue. I think we show too much and too often. I think we produce too much and too often. I think this needs to be revisited. The topic of how often do we need to give people a new collection? Does it really make sense? Then everyone running all together at the same time to the same factories.
I would wish for a bit more freedom there actually, especially from stores and from buyers. They have so much power over the whole industry. For example, a store buys from our collection, and it’s usually just a selection. It’s not the full collection obviously. So that kind of defines the way you’re being perceived by the end consumer. It's difficult for small brands to grow and, step foot into this industry. I would wish for the industry to shape a bit of awareness in that sense there, but also for the actual craftsmanship. Pattern makers and seamstresses. All of these jobs are a dying art form. Now everyone wants to be an influencer, stylist, creative director, or designer. But there's so much more that is important.
GATA: Let's talk about Yeezy. Recently you both took up positions as design directors at Yeezy. How did this happen?
Callum: I think we were in the atelier one Saturday night and the phone rang just as we were packing up for the day. It was an American number and some guy asked “Is this Prototypes?” It was actually H. Lorenzo, a store that stocked us in Los Angeles. Then the phone just got muffled and passed on and yeah, I recognised the voice straight away. And he was just like, “yeah, this is Ye.” Then he just started talking about the brand. I think we were on the phone for quite some time actually. Just picking at each other's brains. And the next thing, you know, we flew out to LA to go see them and I think we just clicked right away.
Laura: And his vision, he was speaking a lot about his vision, which got us excited for the first time in years, speaking to someone who's so visionary and is so up for not fitting in at that moment. He made us grow a lot. There are no rules and I think this is so special as a creative to be put in an environment where anything can happen.
Callum: He always pushes to see something else and try and develop it into the next level. There was one time, where I think we made 36 boiler suits in a day. Which was just off the roll, a sharpie and a pair of scissors and I think I was creating boiler suits from just cut-out shapes. It was like something from a murder scene basically. When they draw the outline of a body. At one point, you know I was biting my lip at one point because I was like, how many more of these do I have to do? No, but actually when I look back at that PDF, I realise that the only three I like are the last three that I made. So there is a method behind that and I think I learned a lot from that process.
GATA: What's next for prototypes? From a creative point of view, how do you see the brand developing in the next year. I know new things are coming.
Laura: We want to concentrate and focus a bit more on sharing knowledge and education. Building a community around it and setting up this platform properly. We hope the DIY part will grow, and encourage people to make their own stuff, to take care of the new generation.
Callum: The show [for the new collection], I think is important for this year. We want to show again, after doing, a digital campaign last time round. I think there are also a lot of other developments that we want to sort of push our language into now.
Laura: We’re going to have our first shoe!
Callum: We want to work on shoes this year, so that should hopefully be something coming up. I think we also want to work more with collaborative partners. I think going to a brand and getting access to their warehouse and saying, give us all the stuff that you can't get rid of. What's the dead stock, what's sitting, taking up space in the warehouse? Let us take that and let us create something new from it. I think that's a new way of collaborating because we want to eat other brands' waste. I think that was what we wanted to work on this year.
Laura: And hopefully moving to Paris!
Callum: Getting a creative studio in Paris would be something ideal. Our roots are in Switzerland as we've been living [there] for the past few years and developing a brand, but I think just being in the middle of it all in Paris and having a separate creative studio here would be ideal.
“What’s the dead stock, what’s sitting, taking up space in the warehouse? Let us take that and let us create something new from it...we want to eat other brands’ waste.”
GATA: Prototypes is still a young brand at this point. Do you feel like the message has changed at all over the years?
Laura: No, I don't think so. I think it’s just a constant learning curve, with every collection, with every piece, with every season. We see a little bit clearer what we do well and what we don't do well, or what we want to focus on and what we don't. We call them prototypes for the sake of prototyping, we're still trying to innovate, engineer and play nonstop and see where it goes.
Callum: I think the messages are still the same, but we're just trying to develop it further now. Just to keep pushing on the idea of the original source — the original idea of the brand — which is to educate the kids into being the supplier.
GATA: At GATA, we love cinema and we think that movies can be such a search of inspiration for artists; are there any movies that have inspired you or you would like to recommend to our readers?
Laura: Disney to be honest. I love the evil characters from Disney. I'm always inspired by them. I love Cruella, and Ursula from The Little Mermaid. This I love watching. I love watching it because it’s my time off from my head and it's going back into my childhood.
Callum: Also we worked on this print with a graphic designer called Nicolai Schmelling and that was inspired by the Cinderella scene, where all the animals within the forest fly in and help her make her dress. He took it and scaled it down. He made two rats; one of them was a nice rat and was repairing part of the graphic and then there was a nasty rat that was destroying it. I think that was quite a nice concept that came from a movie.
GATA: Is there anything else that you want to add?
Laura: We love GATA!
Callum: We love GATA and we love Japan! We were really fortunate to go to Tokyo this year. We’re working on Yeezy over there, but if we have time we’d like to see you all and hang out there in Tokyo. Hopefully, we can be back very soon!