After discovering the SEMPERVIVUM trio during the last edition of D’DAYS, MODEM’s Cendrine de Susbielle invited the ‘zero waste’ ethical wear label to install their pop-up atelier on 25 rue Yves Toudic until September 26th. Here’s what Gilles Baudoux, the brand’s creative director, has to say about ‘zero waste’ as a tool to design sustainable fashion and educate the fashion consumer.

MODEM: How did you come up with the idea of creating a so-called ‘zero-waste’ fashion label?
Gilles Baudoux: My colleague Lola and I met while studying at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs
in Paris, and later on, we met Thibault that is the CFO of our brand. We graduated last year and founded our brand straight after. The goal is to make a comprehensive range of ‘zero waste’ clothes, which allows you to dress from head to toe. ‘Zero waste’ means that no fabric is wasted during the design process. We basically try to design differently, while keeping sustainable and ethical values in mind. We constantly experiment in order to connect our design know-how to the fashion industry’s artisanal and industrial reality — that is pretty much what SEMPERVIVUM is about. Having said that, our goal is not to make conceptual garments, but to produce environmental friendly ready-to-wear that is affordable, unisex, and that matches well with any kind of wardrobe.

MODEM: Tell us more about the concept behind your pop-up atelier...
Gilles Baudoux: What you see on display here is what we like to call our mobile workshop. The aim of this mobile workshop is to prove to the customer that ‘zero waste’ fashion is not a fairy tale but an actual reality. We have our machines, fabrics and patterns ready, so whenever somebody pops by and is curious about our work, we can show her or him how ‘zero waste’ fashion is made. In addition, we have a size chart from 1 to 6 – it starts with a women’s XS and ends with a men’s XL — so basically, we can dress anybody and everybody. All our designs are custom made on request, and it takes about two weeks to deliver them to our customer, depending on the design and fabrics.

MODEM: And how do you source your fabrics?
Gilles Baudoux: We always try to respect at least one sustainable criteria, which means that we’re only working with ecological, recycled, recyclable and artisanal fabrics, which are produced in small manufactures of human scale. So far, we’ve been working with Spanish denim, Japanese jersey molton, Irish wool blends and fully recyclable TPU — all theses fabrics are produced by artisans or family-owned factories. We also like to work on the surface design of our fabrics, and that’s why we’ve been developing our very own print patterns together with a Parisian artist. All this allows us to not only share our ideas with other fashion professionals and creative minds, but to also provide work to local and regional manufacturers and artisans.

MODEM: What’s up next for SEMPERVIVUM — and more importantly, where can we buy your clothes?
Gilles Baudoux: We will launch our e-shop at the end of September and we’re currently discussing distribution and points of sales in Paris and abroad...it’s only the beginning of SEMPERVIVUM, but we will have some good news soon!


More information on sempervivum.paris.

Interview by Elisabeta Tudor © Modemonline

Picture courtesy of Julie Michelet, SEMPERVIVUM and Fucking Young! Magazine.