J.W. Anderson Sustainability - SustainabilityTracker.com

JW Anderson is a fashion label founded by Jonathan Anderson. The sustainability-related content available for the brand is limited, but it includes support for art and cultural institutions through the JW Anderson Collections Fund. The fund was conceived to help museums in the U.K. acquire works by underrepresented artists, with annual funding of 50,000 pounds for a collecting institution. The brand has also been associated with a collection that used plants grown on materials over about 20 days and with garments and shoes decorated with grasses, plants, and other organic references, although the source notes that the extent of the collection’s sustainability was not established.

Collections Fund launched

British fashion label JW Anderson has named the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in West Yorkshire, England, as the inaugural recipient of the JW Anderson Collections Fund. Conceived by brand creative director Jonathan Anderson, the fund aims to support the acquisition of works by museums across the U.K. A collecting institution will receive 50,000 pounds a year to acquire works by artists who are underrepresented in the U.K.

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Funding for underrepresented artists

With the funding, Hepworth Wakefield purchased a large-scale charcoal drawing by Jake Grewal. The piece will be displayed at the gallery in spring 2023.

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Plants used in collection

Using plants grown on a series of materials that took about 20 days to cultivate to desired look (and were grown in a polytunnel on the outskirts of Paris in collaboration with Paula Ulargui Escalona), the designer affixed grasses and plants to garments and shoes, creating a collection intended as “a fusion of the organic and the fabricated,” according to the brand’s show notes.

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Grass sneakers and organic details

The grass sneakers are already a social media hit, longish stalks of grass or a group of micro greens (Chia plants) growing on the uppers of a shoe giving an anthropomorphic image to the idea of circular fashion. There were other examples, too. “Ozone-treated” cotton was treated as such to make it look as though it had been buried underground, and tech relics (old earphones, a pen drive, a phone case) decorated a leather coat.