BassCoutur Is a Paris Fashion Brand Serious About Sustainability

Photo: Courtesy of Bass Coutur

What a difference six months can make. Vogue attended BassCoutur’s sophomore outing last summer, atop a parking garage in a heat wave. You could feel the energy in the clothes, the philosophy, and the casting. But the brand was still finding itself.

Fast-forward to this men’s fashion week, and BassCoutur—a label entirely based on recycling, upcycling, and sourcing deadstock wherever it lurks and giving it a second lease on life—seems to be hitting its stride.

Three seasons ago, vintage veteran Riad Trabelsi launched the label with the idea of leaving nothing to chance, and nothing to waste. The way forward, he said backstage at Le Carmen, the Pigalle nightclub, is to recycle to the extreme. Whether silk scarves, old factory tarps, or shipping blankets salvaged from Tunisia, everything is grist for the mill.

Those blankets, for example, became a robe and shorts ensemble for the French rapper KillASon, who performed at the show. Laminated, the tarp transformed into an overcoat with a checkered racing detail in back. From back offices in France, Tunisia, and Italy came wool satin from the ’70s and ’80s, now reworked into a street-inflected collection for men and women that has fast gained traction in Japan (at the department store Isetan, Addition Adelaide, and others) and in Korea. Word circled back fast: Some of the biggest retailers in Paris were in the room.

“My message has always been to have fun with recycling and stop overconsuming and devastating the planet,” said Trabelsi. “We’re all about telling a story that’s real.”