Welcome back to “Mile High Conversations” where each month we will be interviewing different Colorado based businesses. This month will be a little different as we are interviewing a Denver Fashion Week sustainable designer Sydney Lenox. Lenox is an Australian American fashion designer based in the Midwest. As a sustainable designer, she focuses on slow-fashion practices through the exploration of natural dyeing and secondhand fabric sourcing.
303: What drew you to showcase your work at Denver Fashion Week specifically?
Lenox: After participating in fashion shows in the Midwest, I wanted to seek out more stages to help me continue to build an audience and challenge myself as a designer. I’ve shown at Kansas City Fashion Week as well as have been an avid participant of ICT Fashion Tour in Wichita, KS. DFW was particularly interesting to me because it highlighted sustainability in a way I haven’t seen at other fashion weeks. Sustainability is an essential part of my artistic practice as a designer.
303: What inspired your commitment to becoming a fully sustainable designer?
Lenox: I studied fashion at Kansas State University and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Both of these programs emphasized the importance of sustainability within the fashion industry. There was a particular focus on the impacts of fast-fashion on both people and the planet. During college, I toured a sweatshop in Guatemala while conducting undergraduate research on a study tour. While it wasn’t explicitly presented to us as a sweatshop, the experience altogether made it impossible for me to ignore the harmful impacts of fast-fashion.
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After both studying it and seeing it in person, I felt as though I was woken up from something I couldn’t unknow. This experience, however, was countered by my time on that trip learning natural botanical dyeing methods and traditional back-strap weaving from Mayan artisans — both of which are artistic practices with ancient origins. There was an immense amount of joy and passion in the way the artisans shared their knowledge with our group, and I fell in love with art made from the Earth with respect and love for people and the planet. While the former experience left me feeling drained and hopeless, I felt like leaning into sustainability in art and fashion was a way to rebel against the fast-fashion industry. It is my small way of being a bit radical.
303: Can you walk us through some of the techniques you use as a sustainable designer or materials you use in your designs?
Lenox: I have been spending the last couple of years exploring natural dyeing methods and colors I can derive from plants and sometimes bugs. I have been particularly focused on indigo the past few months. My process is very slow -– I start with fabric that contains only natural fibers such as cotton or linen. I then create a dye bath with leaves, onion skins, herbs, roots, flowers, or cochineal beetles for the fabric to soak in for a number of hours. It can take several days and be quite unpredictable. However that is part of the fun. I try to grow as much of my dye material as possible and store to use throughout the year, however I also sometimes forage my dye materials and find it growing in the wild.
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303: Could you share a sneak peek into what the collection is going to look like?
Lenox: I am bringing a mixed collective of naturally-dyed looks to demonstrate the range of color that can be derived from nature. I will be showing a few looks dyed with indigo leaves as well as garments made from food scraps, wood, roots and flowers.
303: What do you hope audiences take away from your collection?
Lenox: I hope the audience can take away an appreciation for the art that can be created when we work alongside nature rather than against it.
303: Looking further ahead, what are your long-term goals as a designer working in sustainability.
Lenox: I have a dream of being able to design with as much of the supply chain process being derived from my own backyard as possible. By this, I mean I want to raise and shear the animals, then card and spin the wool into yarn that I’d then dye with plants I harvested, ending in knitting it into a high fashion garment. I hope to have a ‘textile homestead’ with a dye garden where I cultivate various flowers and herbs for dyeing — indigo, madder, coreopsis, marigolds — alongside cotton, hemp, and flax to be woven and knit into plant-based textiles. Likewise, I imagine raising wool livestock— sheep, alpaca, and angora rabbit. I have a lot to learn to achieve this dream. I hope by starting small with the modest dye garden I currently have, I can work my way up.
303: Okay last question — what advice would you give to emerging designers who want to build a brand rooted in sustainability?
Lenox: My advice would be to firstly take time to educate yourself on what sustainable practices appeal to you and what problems within fashion you hope to address as a brand. Sustainability is often looked at and spoken about very broadly in fashion, however I think it is important to know what issue you want to address. For example, a zero-waste designer is using their design practice to address textile waste by creating patterns that eliminate excessive fabric scraps that are often present in manufacturing. A designer who focuses on natural dyeing is using dye work to respond to pollution caused by textile dye mills. There are so many problems within the fashion industry that fall under the umbrella of ‘sustainability’, consider what you are passionate about and develop a design process around addressing that issue in whatever capacity is accessible to you.
Sydney Lenox will be showing her fully sustainable collection at this upcoming Denver Fashion Week’s opening night, Saturday May 10, 2025. You can find Sydney on her instagram and website for a further look into her portfolio.
