23-year-old British designer Patrick McDowell has been upcycling clothes since he was 13

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15th Aug 2019

“I get quite upset when people say, ‘Oh, clothes don’t matter,’” exclaims 23-year-old Patrick McDowell, who grew up just outside of Liverpool, over the phone to .

“People have been decorating their bodies for thousands of years,” he continues, “[Clothing is] the most intimate piece of culture that you have access to because you engage with it every single day.”

When McDowell was 13 years old, he asked his mother for a new schoolbag. “[She] wouldn’t buy me one. So I  found an old pair of jeans and decided to make a bag out of them.” His art teacher took note and, precipitating a personal project—“I ended up making a new school bag every week out of… remnant fabrics and end-of-rolls”—McDowell’s fashion savvy and upcycling enterprise cued a burgeoning designer soon to be thrust into the spotlight.

A decade later, McDowell is a 2018 graduate from Central Saint Martins and recently showed his second collection, ‘Firefighting Aunties’, at Helsinki Fashion Week in July. The entire collection is made using upcycled or deadstock materials thanks to an illuminating internship at Burberry. While there, McDowell asked then-creative director Christopher Bailey if he could use the house’s discarded fabrics; a circular strategy he later deployed with Swarovski.

Off the back of his show, the young designer chatted to about concepting his collections, the symbiosis between fashion and family, and the importance of education in order to pass the baton to the next generation in fashion. 

Image credit: Cindy Sasha

“The inspiration behind [the collection] was to do with my dad being a firefighter and my mom and her five sisters,” he explains of the inventive collection, which was heavy on uplifting yellows and pale blues that softened the literalisation of the theme. Oversized jumpsuits and turtlenecks—made from donated Burberry trench coat swatches and sustainably sourced yarn—had the same effect.

“Those women are the glue that holds our families together, and they’ve always been putting out the metaphorical fires, so I thought it was a nice idea to physicalise what they do all the time as Liverpool ladies,” he says. “Doing that gives me a new connection to my family.”

Image credit: Cindy Sasha

References close to home are key for the nascent designer, who anchors each collection with images or stories from his personal history. Sustainability, on the other hand, “is just part of the business” for McDowell, who represents a refreshing shift among young designers who understand that environmental consciousness is par for the course and changing retail models (“rental being one of the biggest growing markets”) are the way of the future. According to McDowell, sustainability is “modern-day luxury… to wear something and know that it hasn’t caused problems to the planet.”

Which is why McDowell hopes that what is most prominent in his clothing is his storytelling and ability to evoke tropes of glamour—“in Liverpool, everyone is dressed to the nines”—which he played up in this collection with Swarovski crystal-embellished fire hats and bags, designed with unsellable or damaged crystals that would otherwise go to waste.

Image credit: Cindy Sasha

The result is an aesthetic that is distinctly McDowell’s own and his imprint, perhaps unlike some other designers, is both technical and emotional. Cases in point? For this collection, McDowell transformed family pictures gathered by his aunts into prints, imbuing the clothes with an authentic human sensibility. “My mom described it as a family heirloom,” he says. His first collection, too, was inspired by his father’s climbing trip and enabled McDowell to “create a dialogue between me and my very masculine father which we didn’t have before.” 

In his spare time, the young designer also runs workshops in schools and gives talks about the importance of creative learning, as well as raising awareness around our waste output. And brands are listening. In addition to showing at upcoming London Fashion Week and Venice Fashion Week, McDowell is working with Converse on a how-to guide to wear and care for sustainable clothing.

And, though he’s been upcycling fabric since his teens, it’s fair to say that now, thanks to his family’s willingness to collaborate and an increasingly global push to move fashion forward, McDowell is harnessing the performative power of clothing to not only make us feel, but to stir us to act.

“I feel a huge privilege to be a part of the emotions that clothes create when people wear them,” he says. “[When] you put something on and you just feel so, so special.” 

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