Material on Stage - Waste out of Sight. It´s Time to Question Fashion Shows - COM/VERGE Episode 6 with Eric Vinsonneau

The fashion show format was built for buyers and advertisers, to sell a collection. In mid-nineteenth-century Paris, couture houses began presenting each season on live models, twice a year, so clients and buyers could come, see it and order. Department stores carried the format across the Atlantic in the early 1900s with the same purpose. Almost everything around it has changed since: bigger venues, livestreams, screens, now AI-generated runways.

What it is for hasn't.

That purpose belongs to a time when making clothes was slow and costly. It sits differently in a world with an overflow of them, where the format still makes the next collection desirable and the waste behind it stays a public secret. It's time we question what fashion shows are for.

What a classic show leaves offstage

A classic show asks its audience for one thing: an aesthetic judgment. Where the material came from and what the collection leaves behind stay offstage.

For most fashion, that omission is part of the format. RE/CLAIMED does the opposite, literally: a textile waste mountain at the center of the show, and pieces reworked from it live while the models walk. Not every show needs a mountain of waste, but any show we put on can ask what its format leaves out.

With RE/CLAIMED, Eric wants not only to question this split between what is shown and what is left out, but to give the audience agency. Instead of only showing looks, the show uses artistic elements to put the waste problem on stage, builds on upcycling as one way forward, and adds interactive elements that show the audience how they too can take action and feel part of the solution, not just be treated as buyers.

Upcycling as practice, not aesthetic

A stage that stops leaving things out needs a way of working that doesn't leave them out either. That is what upcycling brings to RE/CLAIMED, and not as a look. Upcycling starts from what already exists, so the origin of the material and the waste it came from are part of the piece itself. A show built around it carries that story on stage without adding it afterwards.

That makes upcycling an element of the fashion culture a responsible stage requires, not a style to be shown. It isn't the only route there. Durable design, repair, better materials and slower production belong on a responsible stage too. Upcycling is the entry point this show builds on.

It is also a practice much older than the format and the vocabulary around it. Wherever resources are out of balance, people respond creatively. Out of balance can mean too little: a shortage, a crisis, no way of getting exactly what you want within a day. It can also mean too much: a surplus that one place produces and another has to absorb. Either way, material ends up in people's hands and has to be put to use, and the response draws on the same capacity, seeing what a thing could become.

Circularity and sustainability are recent names for practices people have carried out for as long as they have dressed themselves, long before anyone measured them or wrote them into policy.

Seen this way, upcycling was never a restriction someone had to be persuaded into. It's what people do with what is at hand, and a show that puts it on stage brings an old practice back into view, next to the problem it responds to.

Early signals: modeling is also changing

Questioning the format also means looking at who carries it. Models are becoming more conscious about who they walk for, but awareness doesn't pay rent. Choosing a designer for their point of view, artistic or social, rather than their budget, is a freedom not every model can afford. The accountable choice is still experienced as a cost: small independent brands can't afford to pay models, so many walk out of conviction, for free.

That may keep upcycling in an economic niche for now. But models who walk for an upcycler anyway are an early signal of where preferences and values are heading.

How will we know it works?

A fashion show is measured by what it returns: orders from buyers, press coverage and social reach, often converted into a monetary value. A change in behavior or culture is much harder to measure. It is slower, it has many causes, and no single event can claim it. How to measure it is still an open question, and the tools for it are still being built.

That is no reason to leave the question alone. Fashion shows do speak to society, through collections and aesthetics that respond to their time. But that voice usually serves selling, and because the format feels normal, we rarely ask what role it plays beyond that. If we want to know what a fashion show can do for culture, we first have to question what it is for.

Listen to Episode 6 of COM/VERGE

COM/VERGE is produced by RIVED, the digital ecosystem for fashion upcyclers.