When Olympic rowing champion Imogen Grant walks the red carpet at Tuesday’s Sports Personality of the Year Awards, she will be wearing a special dress.
This is the result of a unique project that allowed Grant to combine his passion for sustainability with high fashion.
The 28-year-old, who was named Athlete of the Year at the BBC Green Sports Awards, donated her old sports kit to the London College of Fashion so it can be upcycled into a dress to wear at the awards.
Grant, who won gold alongside Emily Craig in the women’s lightweight double scull at the Paris Games, said: “I think it’s a great project and I really hope the message gets across.”
“As athletes we are given a lot of kit, but a lot of it ends up going to waste. As soon as the sponsor changes, a whole new set comes along.
“I hope this shows that this kit can have a different life. The way we’re making it at the moment is not sustainable.”
The dress took two months to make and maker Aishwarya Verma faced several technical challenges.
“We had to work with a variety of fabrics that were not manufactured for evening dresses,” she said.
“But the hardest part was disassembling the parts, because I didn’t want to waste anything.”
The final design used six items from the kit, each with a story to tell, and it took Verma seven days to unstitch one of them.
“The front section is the kit I wore when I won gold in Paris,” Grant said. “I have the kit I raced and trained with when I was new to the GB team.
“I set the world’s best time wearing it, and it was part of the jacket I wore at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics.
“When I handed them a big bag of kit in October, I had no idea how they were going to modify it, but they ended up with a red carpet look.”
“We wanted to combine her memories into one dress,” Verma said.
