Our Legacy Workshop: A Counter-System for Dressing
by Ellie Hay
Inside Our Legacy’s first London Work Shop the afterlife of a garment is treated as standard practice.
The repurposing of cloth has always been an integral part of Our Legacy’s make-up — a characteristic that has defined its ready-to-wear collections. This distinction was further distilled into Our Legacy Work Shop at a time (2016) when reselling clothes — beyond eBay — was not really a thing; it emerged as a progressive, ‘circular retail platform, atelier, and vessel for collaboration’ long before this behaviour entered the mainstream.
Almost a decade on, the first permanent Our Legacy Work Shop outside of Stockholm has opened in Soho. Take a left off Shaftesbury Avenue at McDonald’s, pass the Windmill’s fading neon, and slip down Smith’s Court into the old horse stables.
Our Legacy Work Shop has made garment care, surplus materials, and waste-thinking part of its very being — giving the things we wear meaning beyond the moment of purchase. The space is alive, with working dyeing machines, an atelier’s workstation, and a continually shifting circulation of stock. In-house artisans upcycle, recycle, and handcraft garments on-site, developing deadstock fabrics and samples into one-of-one items, while archival and reference garments sit alongside new Our Legacy Work Shop drops. The environment facilitates exploration and creative exchange, spontaneity, and play. It feels experimental in the most grounded way — not a performance of process, but process in motion.
Our Legacy Work Shop
6 Smiths’ Court
London
W1D 7DN
