LONDON — Sustainability and fashion have always been uncomfortable partners, but Amy Powney is trying her best to reconcile them with the launch of her new contemporary clothing line Akyn, which is set to debut at Liberty in the next weeks.

She’s working with a small bundle of materials including regenerative, organic and recycled cottons; certified merino wool, and fabrics made from Tencel’s cellulose-based fibers for the chic, low-key collection of suits, separates and knits.

Powney has also brought on board the faithful Portuguese suppliers and factories that she’d been working with until recently as creative director of the British label Mother of Pearl.

She’s keeping the supply chain as short, and as vertically integrated, as possible, and is also hoping to set wider goals with her suppliers, such as switching to renewable energy.   

Launching the new label has been her dream, although it hasn’t been easy. In an interview, Powney said her aim is to fuse “ethics and aesthetics,” and to create fashion that has a positive impact on nature and community.

“Fashion is a linear system: extraction, manufacture, sale and then end of life. We’ve got an opportunity to lead by example, to show people how fashion can be done differently — and scaled. I want to show people what is possible, and to have fashion be a force for good,” Powney said.

She wants her supply chain “to help promote the best practices, and to have a light touch on planet Earth, so that ‘she’ can completely regenerate herself. We want to produce something that enriches the planet by employing people; giving jobs to communities, and enhancing farmers’ lives.”

Powney, who was raised on a farm in Lancashire, England, and studied fashion design at Kingston University, has been flying the green flag for a while.

She rose quickly through the ranks at Mother of Pearl, and in 2017 won the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, which enabled her to launch No Frills, a core collection made with organic and natural materials.

She later starred in “Fashion Reimagined,” a 2023 independent documentary about her quest to create a sustainable collection “from field to finished garment.” 

A year later she delivered a TED Talk called “How to Fix Fashion and Protect the Planet,” in Detroit during a TED Countdown.

She is also a brand ambassador for Tencel, flagship brand of the Lenzing Group which creates specialty fibers that are wood based, biodegradable and derived from sustainably managed trees and renewable wood sources.

At Akyn, she’s taking a collaborative approach, similar to what she did at Mother of Pearl. She’s working with the sustainably minded Monica Vinader on jewelry, and with the paper company Papier on notebooks and stationery.

She also has an upcoming collaboration with the B Corp-certified outdoor and surf clothing company, Finisterre, which is based in Cornwall.

Powney has also assembled an Akyn advisory board with women including Clare Bergkamp, chief executive officer of Textile Exchange, a global nonprofit that champions climate action within fashion’s material supply chain.

For the board, she has also tapped Grace a Forrest, who serves on the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, and is a U.N. Goodwill ambassador.

Launching Akyn has allowed Powney to reset her design ambitions too. As a young designer at Mother of Pearl, Powney said she was always looking outward, to what other brands were doing or worried about designing to a specific brief.

Now it’s all about “creating my own vision. This collection is actually much more connected to the designer I always thought I would be,” said Powney, who bought her intellectual property and customer lists back from Mother of Pearl, where she spent nearly 20 years.

“This first collection is a palate cleanse, too. Some of my core heroes are there, and it’s the foundation I’ll keep building from. I think it’s cleaner, more refined and chic than in the past,” she said.

The debut collection features chunky wool or cotton fisherman sweaters with the word “Love” knitted across the front; undyed coats and jackets; long, delicate dresses with fitted bodices, and recycled cotton denim.

The palette, not surprisingly, is earthy in shades of oyster, stone, cream, pearl and brown.

Prices range from 190 pounds for a skinny, organic cotton cardigan to 890 pounds for a double-breasted trench made from linen, wool and Tencel Lyocell.

Liberty is the exclusive launch partner, and Powney’s plan is to have a 50-50 split between wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales. Although she’s launched the business independently she said her next job is to raise investment for Akyn, which she’ll be doing in the next few months.

Although launching this collection has been the dream, trying to square fashion with sustainability isn’t easy. Sustainable fashion is expensive, scaling is difficult and the world is flooded with clothing at every price point.

But Powney is standing her ground.

“It’s really tough right now, but if I don’t have a seat at the table, then I can’t make any change. If I walk away then nothing will happen. Scale is important because it gives you a bigger voice, and a bigger chance to actually regenerate the planet.”

She added: “If we scale, it means we can work with our manufacturers and take market share away from people who aren’t doing things as well as we’re doing. We can work with the farmers to improve soil health, and with the factories to create closed-loop systems,” she said, adding that the aim should be progress, rather than perfection.