For a designer in the age of climate crisis, the question is: can fashion exist without producing more?
With garments circulating like never before, the task is not just to invent, but to confront and transform what already exists.
Fur coats are a telling example. Tucked away in attics, inherited from grandmothers, stored with care; never discarded because of their emotional value. They are good coats, made to last, but trapped in a taboo: too uncomfortable to wear, too precious to throw away.
Tottenham HotFurs upcycles vintage fur coats into eleven players, representing a fictional football team. The project interrogates greenwashing, reuse, and the meaning of environmentalism, embracing controversy over comfort and confronting a system where sustainability often substitutes symbols for substance.
Sustainability™
Once a call for responsibility, is now a marketing tool that legitimises consumption. Ethics are mined for profit, and responsibility is pushed onto individuals. The question is not whether we are making the “right” choices, it is about who decides what “right” means, and who benefits.
Capitalism / Design for Obsolescence
A system driven by growth. Products, habits, and attention are designed for circulation and obsolescence, keeping us perpetually dissatisfied. Consumers don’t win but capital does. Every story of progress or sustainability rests on a system built to keep moving, even if it produces things meant to fail.
The Death of Nuance
Social media flattens complexity, reducing ideas to slogans. Brands convert ethics and identity into market power, simplifying contradictions and co-opting activism. True sustainability resists simplification, but nuance rarely sells, and we are left with branding, a language that thrives on clarity, even at the expense of truth.
The Current State of Fashion
Fashion is marked by acceleration and excess. About 70% of the textiles are fossil-fuel-based synthetics, generating microplastics and toxins, while recycling rarely closes the loop. Over 92 million tonnes of clothing are discarded each year, much ending up in the Global South.
Big Oil / ‘Shell is a Fine Company, if I’m to Believe Their Website’
Many synthetics, like faux fur, originate in crude oil. Big Oil profits from these fibres, embedding petrochemicals in fashion while marketing them as “recycled” or “vegan.” Fashion becomes a Trojan horse for oil dependency, normalizing petrochemicals while framing them as sustainable solutions.
On Fur / I’d Rather Go Naked
Fur exists in a paradox: publicly scrutinized but privately persistent. Handmade coats valued longevity and cultural meaning, unlike today’s disposable fashion. Even as brands go fur-free, private sales and heritage collections keep the industry alive, exposing tensions between ethics, desire, and profit.
Animal Rights / The Animal in the Room
Fur confronts us with the animal, its life, death, and the cruelty involved, while faux alternatives obscure these realities. Working with vintage fur forces reflection on consumption, responsibility, and contradiction, making the ethical and material weight of fashion tangible.
What Fashion Means to Us / Post-Brand
Brands no longer lead culture, they exploit it. Fashion has been absorbed by marketing logic, where novelty replaces meaning. Parasite Ventures rejects the “brand” altogether, working as an evolving project that leeches on existing materials and systems to provoke critique.
Tottenham HotFurs / Old Fur, New Flames
We sourced vintage coats across Belgium and the Netherlands and transformed them through shaving, trimming, printing, and painting, with offcuts repurposed. Flame motifs reference both the climate crisis and transformation; “Audere est Gerere” (to dare is to wear) signals responsibility. Every coat is unique and can be ordered; you can bring your own vintage piece for transformation, or Parasite finds one for you. And yes, we do take faux fur.
