June 26, 2025 |
Up and coming British designer, Maximilian Raynor, who made his solo debut with a catwalk show in September last year, has just been announced as the winner of the UK leg of the Circular Design Challenge. Founded by smart fabric producer Reliance Industries Limited, to mark the significance of its innovative R|Elan™ fabrics and their potential for combatting unsustainable design practices, the CDC was launched with the intention of uplifting young designers with environmental consciousness at their core. The competition will culminate at the upcoming edition of Lakmé Fashion Week in October, where Raynor will be joined by the winners of the EU, APAC and India heats.
“It was born out of a very immediate need to process the waste that I was using in the studio,” says Raynor of why he started incorporating sustainable practices into his design process. “I would finish making something and there would be these mounds of fabric. It just felt so wrong.” As a result, Raynor started experimenting, and eventually came up with his signature ribbon textile which has become the foundation for pieces worn by stars like Chappell Roan and Amelia Dimoldenberg.
Judged by an esteemed jury consisting of editor and consultant Akanksha Kamath and head of advanced concepts at Pangaia, Chelsea Franklin, Raynor was tasked with presenting a collection “rooted in circular design principles,” and making his case for going home with the prize. Among the pieces Raynor presented to the jury was a faux-fur coat where the basis for the fabric was the discs of wool that are punched out when making saxophones. “I discovered this when I was visiting the mill in Yorkshire. We hand-cut [the fabric] again and again to create this feathered, Neo fur, which is my alternative to feathers or fur. It’s a cool way to approach fabric that is otherwise extremely harmful, both to animals and the environment.”
Environmentally conscious innovations like this may be at the heart of Raynor’s practice, but should he go on to win the whole of the CDC at the Lakmé Fashion Week edition in the autumn (and the £14,000 and six-month bespoke mentorship with Orsola de Castro that comes along with it), he hopes to fill in the spaces he’s lacking.
“My footwear is not green at all,” he says, before explaining he hopes to delve more into alternative options for leather in the near future. But what really is to Raynor’s testament is his willingness to learn. “It’s that desire to be a sponge and to learn about what the biggest change could be [in my practices]… I’m always very interested in finding ways to identify what works, but also identify what doesn’t work, be very transparent about that and then action some kind of change towards remedy.”
When it comes to what he hopes for the future, Raynor wants sustainable practices to be embraced by all, not just small designers where the pressure to grow quickly feels heavier. “It feels frustrating when graduates are put under extreme scrutiny as to what they’re doing… I feel that that scrutiny would be better placed with some of the bigger corporations that have a much wider impact on society. [That being said] it’s always the young innovators that incite change in the world. So maybe that scrutiny is a good thing, because it puts us in a place where we’re all about action and all about change.”
Photography courtesy of CDC.
