By Walid

One of a kind wearable art

Rococo silk, belle epoque passementerie, 18th-century ecclesiastical embroideries, and hand-embroidered Spanish shawls are the raw materials master craftsman Walid Damirji uses in the creation of his one-of-a-kind designs. Revaluing precious and historic materials by refashioning them into luxury clothing.

Sitting amongst piles of vintage materials from around the world, wearing an embroidered shirt and sitting on a patchworked vintage chair, Walid looks at home in his environment, and the world he has constructed, made of fabrics piled high, hailing from every material culture imaginable.

By Walid is a British fashion label specializing in contemporary pieces for men and women made from exquisite upcycled antique textiles. Established in 2011, founder Walid Damirji’s creations extend beyond fashion into the home with covetable patched and pieced soft furnishings, furniture, and sculpted heads. His distinctive aesthetic is instantly recognizable, often featuring kantha style running stitches that reinforce the fragile and damaged textiles by attaching them to a stable backing material of wool, linen or khadi cotton, creating spirals, circles, waves, and geometries in the process, which he poetically names rain, butterfly and falling brick patterns. The more discoloured and damaged the textiles, the more Walid likes them, finding value and beauty in turning discarded materials into aspirational designs.with an idea.

Walid’s creations are truly the epitome of slow fashion, taking up to six months to clean, repair, back and stitch fragile historic textiles, all before the creation begins. He makes the relationship between creator and wearer explicit by creating an emotional attachment to the very threads of the fabric. The embedded stories and histories create a tangible connection between the past and the present. This is investment clothing, unique, authentic, and meaningful, flying in the face of fast fashion and transient trends, Walid’s clothing begs to be enjoyed and treasured for a lifetime, each wear adding new stories to the provenance of the cloth. 

These are clothes that speak of craft and history – true luxury, taking many long months and the labour and skill of many hands to revive these heirloom textiles. Working with the likes of Italian 17th-century ecclesiastical damask and ottoman velvet, the textiles that are not only rare but time-consuming to bring back to life.

The British-Iraqi designer uses a zero-waste philosophy to construct his designs, ensuring every precious scrap of the heirloom textiles are utilized in making shirts, hats, bags, shoes, and fine art. Traveling the world like a textile anthropologist, he gathers exquisite material relics, each more precious than the next, assembling them into exquisite concoctions that traverse continents and histories.

The collection is not seasonal, and Walid prefers to work locally which inevitably raises the price of the end product. “I don’t feel I have to reinvent the wheel every season”.  His very first jacket from fourteen years ago is still available for order. He recycles ideas constantly, with a recent return to a range of jackets developed from upcycled 19th century opera gloves, an idea he first pursued years prior, he works and reworks ideas again and again. There is inevitably an innate finiteness to working with materials in limited supply, allowing each design to be defined by the textiles themselves.

“History and ancient fabrics have always been an obsession for me. I like to take apart old clothing, tablecloths, alter pieces, and gloves and reimagine them.”

Walid dislikes retro dressing preferring to rework materials.

“I term my position within this company as a role to reinvent and give new purpose to unwanted castaways.”

He sees the beauty in each and every precious scrap, respecting the ancient craft of textile artisans by bringing them into the 21st century through their incorporation into new aspirational pieces.

“I don’t feel I have to reinvent the wheel every season”

The homeware line began a little before COVID lockdown and helped sustain them during that difficult period through an increased interest in luxury lifestyle products. The entire team worked from home, helping to sustain them as individuals as well as By Walid as a business, when so many others were losing their jobs and closing their businesses. The team now consists of between eight and ten people, with duties divided between material processes and admin depending upon skill sets.

Walid operates two separate workspaces the creative and the process driven, one where the fabrics are cleaned and repaired - a job that requires space, and the other where they are dyed, stitched, fixed, and finally recombined and created anew. Creation is a collaborative process with ideas bounced off the team. They operate like a cottage industry.

Having spent half a lifetime working in fashion, Walid has always incorporated some form of repurposing in his work. It all started with one hemp 18th century linen jacket that he made for himself which editors and buyers alike just wanted, and so By Walid the label was born. Pushed to show in Paris, but going without expectations, he was overwhelmed with orders from Joyce, Barney’s, Browns, and other key accounts around the world. He sold 900 jackets, with retailers requesting he expand the collection from jackets to incorporate other items. He now produces men’s, women’s, children’s, footwear, and homeware. Because of the precious nature of his work, Walid never allows stockists to over buy. His policy is to reduce store orders, pushing stockists to buy less. The last thing he wants is to see is his labour and creativity ending up in a resale shop. He also tries to set his own terms with retailers, an anomaly in an industry where retailers traditionally hold the balance of power over designers in regard to payment terms, returns and charge backs. Walid sells when he’s ready and doesn’t work to externally set deadlines.

Despite his success, it’s been an uphill struggle to grow the business. When he first started there was little understanding of upcycling, with each design and material combination different, his work didn’t fit into the usual buying system where duplicates of each style are purchased for resale. Now, with a much greater understanding of waste, more retailers are interested than ever before, and Walid is constantly approached to collaborate on upcycling projects, line extensions and new products concepts.

The business is entirely self-financed choosing to hold off many investment opportunities over the years, preferring to keep things small and retain complete creative freedom. He has always been mistrustful of the big corporations that tempted him with infusions of cash, having seen so many of his contemporaries fall victim to unscrupulous investors. Despite this, Walid recently found himself in a difficult position when a large order from a huge global online retailer went unpaid due to them declaring chapter 11, acting as a wake-up call and a reminding him of his original values of small is beautiful and not to be sucked into a system designed for exponential growth. In line with that ethos, he has also refused to loan or give pieces away to celebrities and influencers alike, despite constant requests to do so, instead choosing to say no to another aspect of our industry that trades design skills for online celebrity with no financial recompense. This has resulted in a slow organic growth for the business itself.

A portion of Walid’s every day is spent on the phone or zoom in search of new materials. Meeting dealers, visiting vintage fairs and auctions across the US, France, and Italy, leaving no stone unturned. People seek him out wherever he goes to share their textile treasures with him. And so, the cycle continues of discovery and reinventions, as he brings precious vintage heritage materials, reimagined into contemporary pieces to be treasured.

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