Hannah Ernst

At the height of fashion’s villain era, where sustainability has become an inflated buzzword and micro trends are ubiquitous, Julie Pelipas has disrupted the industry. After a journey that is in part intuitive and involuntary, Pelipas has moved from Vogue Ukraine in Kyiv to her upcycling system BETTTER in London, which is one of the winners of this year’s Karl Lagerfeld Prize.

Inherently shy, Pelipas has viewed clothes as mental armor that provides the wearer with comfort and confidence. While she often felt uncomfortable being photographed by paparazzi during her time at Vogue, her street style pictures of androgynous, well-tailored suits have left the industry enamored. Little did they know she was wearing prototypes for her first upcycled deadstock pieces: Wide-legged trousers with side pleats from their adaptable waist, knee-length suit pants, and oversized blazers with hyper-broad shoulders and surprising cutouts—all in a reduced color palette.

HANNAH ERNST: You’ve been wearing oversized men’s suits since your early childhood. Do you think you created BETTTER with yourself in mind as the customer?

JULIE PELIPAS: BETTTER is a very genuine continuation of myself. Everything I do for it is the reflection of my inner world. But I always love to say that BETTTER is much bigger than me. I don’t consider myself a designer, I just consider myself a visionary that creates this system as a platform for other creatives to have enough tools and education to thrive and develop upcycling as a method. I hope it’s going to develop further and there’s going to be a community that will develop it into a global movement.