The Sheltersuit Foundation is a non-profit organization that has distributed more than 20,000 warm and protective products across Europe, South Africa, and the U.S to people without a home. Committed to the use of upcycled materials, reducing waste and providing jobs for people removed from the labour market, Sheltersuit label makes streatwear from luxury upcycled deadstock materials, these garments are designed to keep the wearer warm and protected, while maintaining the brand’s key pillars of innovation, durability, reusability, freedom, and hope. For its Paris Fashion Week debut, Sheltersuit Label has received support from Chloé with a donation of further materials and deadstock, along with know-how and studio space in the heart of Paris. Sheltersuit had its first brush with the runway via a collaboration for the Chloé Autumn-Winter 2021 collection, which featured Sheltersuits and backpacks assembled from the luxury Maison’s deadstock. The Fall/Winter 2022 collection of menswear, womenswear, and gender-fluid garments emphasizes purposeful design. The streets and the unsheltered are referenced through functional elements, weather-resistant materials, and graphic prints, many of which convey call-to-action texts. Many of the garments were produced by Sheltersuit factory workers, the majority of whom are former refugees.

The origin of the Sheltersuit Label began eight years ago far from Paris Fashion Week. While studying fashion and producing one-of-a-kind outerwear, Bas Timmer learned that a friend’s father had died of hypothermia from sleeping outside in the cold next to a homeless shelter. Unsettled by the life-threatening vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness, he quickly sourced leftover weather-resistant materials – a sleeping bag and a tent – and made a jacket with a panel that converted into a sleeping bag, which he offered to a man in a similar state of precarity. Now, in developing and launching the Sheltersuit Label, Timmer underscores his determination to address the worldwide crisis of more than 150,000 million people living without a home. As a label, Sheltersuit acts not only as financial support to the Foundation, but introduces a wider audience to the People Helping People movement. Shelterbags were distributed to people experiencing homelessness after the Paris Fashion Week Show, Discover the images of the collection below.