Londoners, looking for something to fill your Saturday afternoon? You’re in luck. Paria Farzaneh has opened her own concept space in Brockley, south of the river, where she is selling fresh togs from her new collection Blind Foresight. Skipping the catwalk this season, Farzaneh says Blind Foresight is a “contemporary response to today’s need and want of ‘essentials’. I wanted to create garments that are accessible to everyone. When the products are sold through a wholesale system, the price jumps up dramatically – you also have to wait for the products, they aren’t available instantly.” The physical space allows people to “engage with the brand more often”, says Farzaneh: “physical events let people experience the world of Paria Fazaneh in a less serious form.”
Open until February 19, Blind Foresight is a place where you can kit out not only your wardrobe, but your entire gaff, too – stocking everything from Paria Farzaneh hot water bottles to branded incense. The designer has also created mesh bags and woolly gilets stamped in her signature Iranian paisley print – made with mills in Yorkshire, Scotland and deadstock mesh factories in the Midlands.
“When sourcing fabric, we use technical mills in Scotland for waxed cottons, and for rejected rolls of fabric we source from industrial wholesalers who provide a stock service of rolls. We use a meterage of the big rolls, avoiding reproduction and using what’s already been made and rejected from other factories, enabling second life in our products,” says Farzaneh. She also sourced stock denim from Osaka, Japan, to create 20 unique pairs of jeans which each come with their own, distinct paisley print, hand sprayed by London-based artist Lucas Dupu.
Farzaneh, who usually shows during London Fashion Week, has had her fair share of memorable catwalk shows – from staging a traditional Iranian wedding inside a Shoreditch Primary School for AW20, to dragging the fashion pack at to Misserden Farm, Amersham, for her powerful SS21 outing.
“Doing shows over the past couple of years has sometimes meant sacrificing the audience who can attend, I’m thinking of our customers in particular,” says Farzaneh. “I wanted to open the waters and have a wider audience come in, to be able to experience the brand no matter who they are and what they do.”
Blind Foresight by Paria Farzaneh is open 10am-6pm, Monday-Friday, until February 19 at 16-18 Brockley Cross, London, SE4 2AA. Shop pieces from the collection here.
