Fashion and Beauty
These clothes are sure to help people fish for compliments.
Isabella Taylor, who joined Isab, makes clothes from salmon skin, saying sustainability is her top priority.
The young Brit visits fishmongers and smokehouses to collect skin that would otherwise be thrown away to create his unconventional designs.
“Sustainability is the only thing I care about – the only reason I’m in fashion is to help be sustainable,” Taylor told South West News Service.
“If it’s not sustainable, I don’t feel good about it – it adds to the beauty of fashion,” he added.
Taylor creates her slimy fabric by peeling the skin of each creature. Then he removes the scales from each fish, dyes the skin and dyes it.
The designer then drapes the material over a structure to mold it as it dries. When he is done, on the skins they no longer smell and they last a long time.
“There are so many beautiful clothes in the world but if you know that they are all made of new fabrics, they are no longer beautiful,” he explained.
Taylor first became interested in marine life when she was young. He snorkeled while on vacation and took pictures of the fish.
The Brit, who has identical twins, said she wanted to do something original to differentiate herself.
“Being identical in appearance to my sister Alice, I wanted a way to express my uniqueness,” she said.
“My sister and I did ballet as children and our mother, Emily, made our costumes. This is part of the reason I started sewing at 13 and how I became interested in art,” he recalls.
Before she designed clothing from fish, Taylor painted the creatures.
“I started painting dead fish and this became my niche – it was easier to paint something that didn’t move so I used pictures from the fish counter in supermarkets,” he added.
While he enjoyed painting, the boy wanted to involve more people in his artistic process and moved into design
“Fashion is the art that you see every day and it relates to a specific person as opposed to being on the wall,” explains the fish-loving fashionista.
“Fashion evokes emotions and it’s more exciting to me than painting,” he further declared.
Taylor often creates structural haute couture and credits fish skins with giving her the ability to experiment.
“I love playing with the specific qualities of fish skin that you don’t get in other fabrics and this is what I use as the driving force behind my work,” she says.
“They are highly sculptural pieces that weigh almost nothing,” he added. “It doesn’t drop the fabric or drape over the floor. The way the garments are light means you can easily create these surrealist coutures.”
Taylor’s designs attract clients from all over the world.
“I sent some outfits to Julia Fox – her stylist reached out to me asking me for some for New York Fashion Week,” she said. “He didn’t wear them but they think he might wear them for another event soon.”
Taylor hopes to get a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Arts in London so she can turn her fashion into a business.
“In the future, I hope my business will have two strands.
“First, I want to continue making creative sculptural pieces but I also want them to be accessible,” enthuses Taylor.
“I want to branch out and sew fish skin onto old charity shop clothes to make them super wearable everyday items that anyone can buy or wear.”
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