In September, Exiled hosted its first public exhibition during London Fashion Week: Waste Not: From Fallout to Future.
Held during this most prestigious week of the global fashion calendar, the show signalled the brand’s arrival into the industry, drawing audiences to a different kind of runway – built not on consumption but reclamation.
Waste Not was held in collaboration with RÆBURN, a leading regenerative design studio and featured pieces from its founder and responsible design pioneer, Christopher Raeburn. The exhibition was located in The Lab E20 in Stratford, East London, co-founded by RÆBURN.
Through an immersive installation and design showcase, Exiled presented its limited-run fashion, accessories and homeware, together with other one-off pieces – from furniture to sculpture – created by regenerative design brand ReFactory.
With all Exiled items in the show created entirely or in part from post-consumer waste recovered by leading waste management company, MYGroup, Waste Not reframed this systemic scourge not as an end, but a beginning, proving that circular design can meet the standard and desirability of luxury without compromise.
A Stage for the Cast Out
Waste Not presented waste as the fallout from a system breaking down.
Amid an era now marked by conflict, unrest, division and environmental strain, waste is yet another manifestation of progress without responsibility, with the planet carrying the weight of our collective abundance. Oceans churn with the lifetime of plastic we’ve thrown away. Forests fall for flat-packed furniture and fleeting trends. Metals, mined and forged into appliances, now rust in forgotten landfills. Textiles – the latest fashions of a year, or week, ago – pile high in rotting mounds.
Waste Not invited visitors to look directly at this mountain of materials they are, in part, complicit in consuming and throwing away – the very frontline of waste – and to witness the unseen craft and skill required to deconstruct and reimagine it.
First entering the exhibition through the ‘FALLOUT’ room, visitors were faced with a towering row of zombie-like sculptures, transfixed by a bank of screens playing a series of dark, dystopian footage evoking the blight of consumerism.
From there, the journey moved into ‘MATERIAL TRUTH’, an unflinching presentation of post-consumer and post-industrial waste – the raw truth of overproduction and systemic discard – presented in a series of sculptures and installations, from ocean plastic waste, used cosmetics and beauty products, to piles of surplus personal protective equipment (PPE) and returned stock.
Exiled’s Material Reckoning
The next section, ‘MATERIAL RECKONING’, showcased Exiled’s contribution to Waste Not, with pieces embodying the brand’s central mission to reclaim materials cast out from traditional value systems and reimagine them as items of both desire and purpose.
Among the products taking centre stage were a trio of patchwork jackets from the Shift collection, created from consumer returns otherwise destined for landfill from leading high street retailers and finished with buttons injection-moulded from recovered beauty and cosmetics plastic waste.
Another key piece was the Heritage Edition No. 1 bag – the first product from Exiled’s Signature range, with a limited run of just 20 – created by a community of women in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province supported by Exiled (with MYGroup). The bag uses a traditional, heritage weaving technique to combine harvested reeds and rushes from the women’s community with leather recovered from the factory floor of one of the world’s foremost luxury car manufacturers. The bag also features bespoke brass fittings created from recovered metal.
The space also introduced Exiled’s Serenity collection, featuring garments crafted from sari material handloomed by another community of women artisans in Sri Lanka’s North Western Province. The community is also growing regenerative cotton and developing a natural dye replacement locally for the women to use in future creations.
‘When fast fashion and production leave little room for thought, care or hope, the exhibition offered space to pause and reflect. Each piece began with what we had, not what we wished for. We hope visitors were similarly inspired by this responsible approach to making and appreciated that waste is only waste when we choose to do nothing with it.’ - Rebecca O'Leary, Exiled Textiles Manager
Complementing these overtly fashion pieces were Exiled’s more functional and social design products. These included its ‘Patch’ teddy bears, envisioned to comfort children undergoing medical treatment and created with recovered sterilising surgical wrap used in hospital operating theatres (including shredded material for the bear’s inner), sourced through a collaboration with Johnson & Johnson MedTech and NHS trusts alongside MYGroup.
Elsewhere was a step-by-step installation of the process Exiled uses to transform hi-vis PPE waste from MYGroup’s clients such as Amazon, PepsiCo and Arco into functional products, from sorting and grading by hand, to laundering, deconstructing and remaking.
Alongside Exiled’s own pieces was a series of ‘RÆMADE Bears’ produced exclusively by Christopher Raeburn RÆBURN studio. Playful in form but serious in message, each bear told the story of a different waste stream and the potential of the discarded.
‘Working with the team from Exiled has been a fantastic journey. It’s impressive to see the range of products and initiatives they’re developing; having those items exhibited at The Lab E20 brings yet more pride to this truly unique exhibition.’ - Christopher Raeburn
Opening Up to the Industry and Community
Complementing the exhibition was a series of events and engagements Exiled held across London Fashion Week, drawing leading brands and influential spokespeople on sustainable fashion, as well as the next generation of designers, with special visits and workshops for schools, colleges and universities.
Waste Not’s opening Private View attracted representatives from some of the British and global fashion industry's household names, including Chanel and Selfridges. Their presence and supportive feedback confirmed what Exiled has quietly been proving since its inception: that circular design, executed with precision and artistry, is the new measure of relevance in today’s fashion world.
‘Absolutely amazing. Innovative, inspiring and very thought provoking.’ - Chanel
On the evening of Thursday 18 September, Waste Not hosted a special viewing and panel discussion: ‘Is Fashion’s Future Second-Hand?’, curated by Gemma Metheringham, circular fashion consultant and founder of The Elephant in My Wardrobe. The discussion brought together:
· Paola Masperi, Digital Product Passport innovator and founder of Madeby.
· Kemi Oloyede, artist and designer and founder of the Sew London Project.
· Lydia Bolton, sustainable fashion, reuse and repurposing advocate.
· Daniel M. Quist, a cultural strategist with a focus on sustainability and design.
· Rebecca O’Leary, Textiles Manager at Exiled.
Together, the panellists explored how transparency, repair and education must converge if circularity is to become more than a slogan, and their collective message was clear: responsibility begins at design. Whether through Digital Product Passports – technology that Exiled is soon to bring to market across its ranges – local repair or emotional longevity, the future of fashion lies not in faster cycles, but in a deeper connection between maker, material and wearer alike.
The closing weekend of the show saw a Textiles Deconstruction and Remake Workshop hosted by Exiled’s technicians and inviting attendees to unpick waste materials and garments before recreating them anew. The workshop demoed the craft of circular making and regenerative design, presenting waste not as abstract material, but to be worked with in the here and now.
A Future in the Making
As the exhibition closed, the sense of momentum was unmistakable. Waste Not was never just an exhibition. It was a proposal for a new way to make, live and value.
For Exiled, it marked a defining moment: an introduction to the fashion stage, standing alongside leading partners and telling its story of material, craft and integrity first-hand to some of the industry’s largest brands.
And from this thread, the brand’s future is being woven.
