Joshua Samuels is going back through the rubbish. Quite literally.
The London-based designer has unveiled "More Rubbish," the second instalment of a project dedicated to finding new possibilities in clothes and materials that already exist. Six pieces make up the new collection, each produced in the brand’s London studio using vintage garments, discarded clothing, scraps and unwanted materials.
Where the first "Rubbish Collection" centred around a more tightly defined set of ideas, its follow-up loosens things up. New silhouettes sit alongside reworked versions of existing styles, spanning the Baby Tee, Funny Fam Trou, FO Baggy Zip Hood, Shit Shirt, Old Tee and Rotten Apple Beanie.
Samuels has previously made a habit of dismantling several old garments and rebuilding them into something larger. "More Rubbish" asks what happens when that process is reversed.
Each Baby Tee begins life as a full-sized vintage T-shirt before being completely deconstructed and rebuilt into a cropped, fitted silhouette with short sleeves. Crucially, the original graphics, fading, colour and signs of wear remain intact, meaning no two finished pieces are quite the same.
That tiny silhouette is deliberately placed alongside the oversized FO Baggy Zip Hood. Despite sitting at opposite ends of the sizing spectrum, both come from the same underlying exercise: taking existing clothing and seeing how radically its proportions can be changed.
The Shit Shirt is exactly what it sounds like: a vintage shirt with “SHIT SHIRT” appliquéd across its front using lettering cut from old knitwear and Dickies. The Old Tee follows the same deliberately straightforward logic, applying “OLD TEE” lettering made from vintage deadstock felt onto individually sourced vintage T-shirts.
Sustainability sits behind the way the clothes are made, but the brand avoids making it the entire personality of the product. Instead, reworking old clothing becomes the starting point for experimentation, humour and developing new silhouettes.
"More Rubbish" launches exclusively through Joshua Samuels on October 8 at 6pm.
