Sheltersuit Fall Winter 2022 - 2023 Label debuts at Paris Fashion Week® -

PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE: Sheltersuit Label debuts at Paris Fashion Week® with socially-minded luxury streetwear. Sheltersuit Fall Winter 2022 – 2023 Label debuts at Paris Fashion Week®.

The origin of the Sheltersuit Label began eight years ago far from Paris Fashion Week. While studying fashion and producing one-of-a-kind outerwear, Bas Timmer learned that a friend’s father had died of hypothermia from sleeping outside in the cold next to a homeless shelter. Unsettled by the life-threatening vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness, he quickly sourced leftover weather-resistant materials – a sleeping bag and a tent – and made a jacket with a panel that converted into a sleeping bag, which he offered to a man in a similar state of precarity.

Such was the catalyst for the Sheltersuit Foundation, a non-profit organisation that has distributed more than 20,000 warm and protective products across Europe, South Africa, and the U.S. — all while committing to the use of upcycled materials, reducing waste and providing jobs for people removed from the labour market. For Timmer, this ongoing and expanding initiative is more than a mission, it is a movement: People Helping People.

Sheltersuit had its first brush with the runway via a collaboration for the Chloé Autumn-Winter 2021 collection, which featured Sheltersuits and backpacks assembled from the luxury Maison’s deadstock. Now, in developing and launching the Sheltersuit Label, Timmer underscores his determination to address the worldwide crisis of more than 150,000 million people living without a home.

Says Timmer, “Purpose and profits are inextricably linked, and only through collective action can we deliver the scale of change and transformation the world needs.”

For its Paris Fashion Week debut, Sheltersuit Label has received support from Chloé with a donation of further materials and deadstock, along with know-how and studio space in the heart of Paris. Additional fabrics have been donated by Gabriela Hearst and sourced from LVMH deadstock. The collection encompasses menswear, womenswear, and gender-fluid garments that emphasise purposeful design.

Most outerwear pieces nod back to the original Sheltersuit, which will be showcased in the line-up. The streets and the unsheltered are referenced through functional elements, weather-resistant materials, and graphic prints, many of which convey call-to-action texts.

Made from luxury upcycled deadstock materials, these garments are designed to keep the wearer warm and protected, while maintaining the brand’s key pillars of innovation, durability, reusability, freedom, and hope. And because collaboration is fundamental to the Sheltersuit ethos, this season features creations by independent designer Lisa Konno, and luxury sustainable denim pioneer RE/DONE – both at the forefront of making a positive impact through fashion.

The collection will be preceded by a bold form of performance art about the unsheltered that will play out amidst of hundreds of Shelterbags to be distributed to people experiencing homelessness afterward. Many pieces will be produced by Sheltersuit factory workers, the majority of whom are former refugees.

As a label, Sheltersuit acts not only as financial support to the Foundation, but introduces a wider audience to the People Helping People movement. This presentation serves as a new platform for the Sheltersuit Foundation and its dedication to protecting the unsheltered.

The presentation of Sheltersuit Label, under the artistic direction of founder Bas Timmer, take place at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.