Balenciaga has made a clothes-stuffed sofa

Culture
Design
Posted 28 November, 2019

By Sofia Phillips

London, UK

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Balenciaga has collaborated with Russian interior designer Harry Nuriev to create a clear sofa stuffed with offcuts and unsellable garments for Design Miami 2019.

Have you ever vacuum-packed your clothes before going on holiday so you can fit more than one single outfit into your tiny carry-on suitcase? If the answer’s yes, picture that, but make it fashun.

In an effort to combat the fashion industry’s serious sustainability problem, Balenciaga have teamed up with artist, architect, and furniture designer Harry Nuriev to create a sofa that you can actually buy. While I’m not sure how this might look in your average living room – you’d have to go very minimal on everything else to avoid a hoarders-nest-type-aesthetic – it’s a pretty awesome solution in my opinion to cutting down on unnecessary clothing waste.

Back in 2018, Burberry was slammed for burning over £90m worth of their products because they ‘didn’t want them to get stolen or sold cheaply.’ While they claimed that the energy generated from literally setting accessories, clothes, and perfume on fire was ‘captured’ (whatever that means), you’d think that given our current climate situation, they’d be acting a tad more embarrassed.

Fashion is rather terrible when it comes to impacting the environment. I mean, it’s officially the largest global consumer of water and throws out around one garbage truck worth of waste every minute. So, if there’s anything they can be doing (even if that means creating questionable household ornamentation that will probably never sell), I’m all for it.

Made by Nuriev for Design Miami 2019, an art fair which runs from the 3rd to the 8th of December, the sofa is essentially a transparent vinyl casing that contains an array of damaged, unsold, and leftover pieces that the Paris fashion house has inevitably accrued over the last few years. ‘The sofa is intended to encourage sustainable practices within design and elsewhere,’ explained Balenciaga. ‘We are dedicated to implementing programmes that upcycle waste and contribute to a circular economy.’

I know what you’re thinking though: there’s no point in recycling old clothes if you’re going to put them in more plastic, but fear not, the sofa’s L-shaped casing has been rescued from environmentally-conscious Nuriev’s ‘trash library of shapes.’

An advocate of sustainability himself, Nuriev considered Balenciaga a natural partner. ‘When I met Balenciaga’s creative team, I proposed collaborating on an art object centered around sustainability and was excited to learn about their mission to upcycle waste,’ he told Vogue. ‘They told me they had unused, damaged clothing and garment off-cuts from the Balenciaga warehouse, and then everything developed organically from there.’

It’s not clear what’ll happen to the sofa after its debut at Design Miami (who knows, maybe it’ll end up in my apartment), but what’s important is that Nuriev has engineered an item that gives garments a new lease of life, and we stan. Especially since it gives me major ‘90s inflatable chair nostalgia.

Sofia Phillips

Feature Media Manager & Senior Writer London, UK

Sofia (She/Her) – I’m the Feature Media Manager and a Senior Writer at Thred, specialising in exclusive articles and live interviews, fashion and beauty with a focus on sustainability, women’s rights, psychedelics, and Latin America. I studied Spanish at the University of Exeter and International Journalism at City, London. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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