“IT’S ALL ABOUT REPURPOSE” – THIS UNIFORM’S ESME MARSH ON BREAKING NEW GROUND
Photography By Milo Black
“My ultimate goal – I suppose it's a very ambitious goal – would be to change fashion a bit. [The industry] is not very accessible.” says Esme Marsh, the 24-year-old designer behind clothing brand This Uniform. I had asked her where she saw the company – her first business venture – going forward. When you consider the waves it’s already making, her response is decidedly modest.
When we (virtually) meet, Esme is at her studio in Bermondsey, a space she has shared with other designers since completing a Fashion Design degree last May. She tells me she interned at a few high fashion brands during her time at uni, an experience that became the ammunition for This Uniform. “That was when I really realised how backwards fashion is, there’s so much greenwashing”.
This desire to impart systematic change in an industry that notoriously puts profit over people is visible in every fibre of Esme’s brand. Despite only existing since October 2021, This Uniform has already cemented a lucid identity.
Each piece is designed with functionality in mind. Esme buys the most ethical fabric possible – hand-dyed and locally sourced – and utilises off-cuts at each stage of the production process.
The result is high quality, versatile clothing that marries form with functionality; “All the items can be worn with each other, everything should be super durable, super considered, and modular.” says Esme.
This Uniform’s latest drop consists of colourful bucket hats crafted from repurposed fabric. The stitching is overt and intentional, each piece tracing the maker’s hand.
This design integrity is what makes This Uniform so special. Esme doesn’t just utilise cast-off materials, but celebrates the many previous lives they’ve lived. I’m not alone in my adoration either: “I’ve had a lot of cool people interested in them,” Esme tells me of the hats, “and I’m suddenly thinking, wait, I can really do this.”
Through the course of our conversation, It’s hard not to smile at Esme’s wordy, animated responses. Her warmth and zeal emanate as she talks about This Uniform. “I'm really just learning as I go along. It’s just me, but I’m loving it. I genuinely love making these things.”
But despite her bubbling positivity, Esme’s isn’t a blind optimism. She’s all too familiar with the obstacles that come with starting a slow fashion business. From a financial perspective, opting for recycled materials raises its own set of issues: “You can buy 100% polyester for around £7, but recycled polyester in the exact same colour and weight will be almost double the cost.”
Esme says she is regularly confronted by the reality of ‘sustainable fashion’ and our collective ignorance to what that entails, which has forced her stay open minded. “I would have thought polyester was 100% less sustainable than cotton. But the more research I’ve done the more I’ve realised how complex the concept of ‘sustainability’ is. Polyester can be endlessly recycled without damaging the quality of the fabric. Whereas cotton you can only recycle once, and then it’s thrown away.”
Beyond these technical challenges, Esme has realised that changing the fashion industry is about undoing its impact on everyday mindsets. “It’s so hard. If I’m using recycled fabrics I have to make some kind of margin, which means boosting prices. But like I said, the industry is so inaccessible. So many people can’t afford to spend that kind of money on their clothes.”
Despite second-hand fashion and rental platforms gaining traction in recent years, Esme recognises that there’s a long way to go before our default spend moves away from the high-street; “It’s just not how we’re programmed. It’s about shifting through the industry itself to really try and change [the way] we think.”
I ask Esme how she stays motivated in the face of such a monumental task. This Uniform pulls the majority of its customers from Instagram, where fast-fashion PR deals and paid advertising still dominate.
“It’s super tricky at the moment, because funds are low,'' she says, but the financial restrictions of sustainable practice also make the process more rewarding. “I love seeing how I can create new techniques that haven’t been done before. Having to work from a specific material with a minimal budget means it’s an extra challenge. It becomes more of an art form than just making clothes.”
Esme also wants to ensure her work starts conversations. “When I get a bit of a following for the brand, I want to talk about this stuff on my Instagram or whatever. To create a platform.”
I wondered if social media had posed its own set of problems for an independent designer, but Esme is confident she can navigate the boundaries between these physical and digital spaces. “[Social media] creates a space to talk, and open up a discussion.”
She notes Fashion Revolution and Story MFG as personal inspirations in this sense; “The transparency [of these brands] is a reminder that you’re not going to be able to do everything 100% right. It’s about being open with your process and creating this space that everyone has access to.”
That sense of community is integral to This Uniform. Esme outsources her manufacturing to a team of seamstresses in central London who she worked with during her degree. “We really got on, so when I opened my studio I continued working with them.”
Esme also relies on a strong network of friends for creative and commercial support, and constantly pools them for market research. “I'm always asking ‘Would you guys buy this? Would you guys wear this?’ You need to bounce off of creative people.” It’s the same nurturing environment she hopes to extend as the business grows. Esme says she’d never hire someone she couldn’t pay fairly, the proliferation of unpaid fashion internships is something she regularly cites when discussing the industry’s ethical faults.
This Uniform is a reminder that community is the linchpin of our clothing. It connects us to ourselves as well as those around us. For Esme, the biggest appeal of secondhand fabric, besides the sustainable aspect, is that it carries a history.
In this way she’s cultivated a brand that’s as much about tracing its steps as it is about breaking new ground. The traders' fairs she frequents to source new material serve as a temporal and spatial network, as well as a social one. “Knowing that this vintage cotton I’ve found has had a whole life before, it's just super fascinating to me”.
It’s this anthropological approach to design that really stands out when speaking to Esme. And through this emerges her compelling hunger to learn. “I love fabric, I love learning everything there is to know about fabric.”
Patchwork, one of her many creative inspirations, feeds this bookishness. “It’s all about repurpose, the new life of things. The stuff I’m working on at the moment is all about that.” This theme threads the regeneration of This Uniform’s fabrics with the emergence of a post pandemic world, and the new era of fashion it’s ringing in.
Esme’s focus on people, those who shape and are shaped by her clothes, make her as much a curator as a designer. “Most of my concepts are based on a feeling”, not just emotional, but physical too. “Clothes for me are political, but it also comes down to comfy leggings and a tee. It’s all about how you feel, it dictates how your day goes.”
That’s the bottom line for Esme, a principle that comes back to her goal of changing the space of fashion. Despite her modesty, I tell her she’s already doing it. If nothing else, This Uniform is Esme's way of constructing the world she sees through the clothes she makes. And in an industry largely driven by collective trends, what’s more groundbreaking than that?