Permanent Smog Collection: An Approach to Sustainable Fashion

Permanent is an Amsterdam-based brand that is quietly redefining what sustainable fashion can look like. Discover Permanent’s new collection, Smog.

Permanent started in Amsterdam in 2018. It sits at the intersection of activism and artisanal craft. The fashion industry often relies on empty promises. However, this label chooses radical transparency. Every collection serves as an inquiry into a specific environmental crisis. They cover issues from water scarcity to chemical hazards. Furthermore, the team bypasses industrial shortcuts. They utilize ancient techniques. They dye fabrics with pomegranate peels and madder roots. Additionally, they do more than sell garments. They publish a full cost breakdown for every piece. This transparency invites the consumer to look behind the curtain. In an era saturated with greenwashing, Permanent offers a rare alternative: slow fashion, made honestly, and designed to last. Through their latest collection, titled Smog, the brand further explores the environmental impact of industrial pollution.

IRK: Permanent started eight years ago. Was there a specific moment or frustration that made you think: this needs to exist? Each of your collections addresses a specific environmental issue. How do you choose which issue to tackle next? Does the world dictate it, or does the collection come first?

Permanent: When I first founded Permanent it was done as a form of activism. Back then, most ‘sustainable’ brands were focused on an already established audience that knew about the problems within the fashion industry and therefore chose to buy their products. These brands mostly had very minimalistic designs in pastel or earth tones. Though I appreciate their effort, it did feel like there were not many brands that wanted to reach out to a younger generation that did not know anything about sustainability yet.

For us, it felt important to share what we have learnt with others through a non-obvious route. It felt tacky to make t-shirts that blatantly stated what they were made from. Instead, we took vintage graphics as our inspiration for our first collection as these are timeless designs that are still appreciated decades later. The theme was water and if someone wanted, they could read more regarding water waste within the fashion industry on our labels and website.

Now, both us and our collections have changed a lot. The materials and techniques should tell more of a story instead of the literal graphics. We generally think of garments and the story comes along the way. However subconsciously, it is probably the world that dictates this for me. I do think that we are often led by our environment, perhaps more than we even like to admit.

Permanent: Landwear and the Aesthetics of Smog

For SS26, Permanent confronts an uncomfortable reality: Smog. The atmospheric haze that haunts our cities, blurring boundaries into a singular, grey mass. Rather than averting its gaze, the brand leans in. They translate this industrial bleakness into swampy, organic hues extracted from pomegranate peels. They employ twenty-one wooden buttons on utilitarian silhouettes, referencing laborers whose trades never require a tie. By mirroring the somber nature of air pollution and the suffocating presence of Smog, Permanent avoids easy optimism. They transform a suffocating haze into a collection that demands a closer look.

IRK: Your SS26 collection is named SMOG. It is a sad, heavy image. Why did you choose to lean into that sadness rather than offer something more hopeful? When designing a collection based on such a heavy reality, how do you balance environmental activism with the need to create a garment that is aesthetically desirable?

Permanent: The serious undertone and swamp green colours of our garments together with the jester designs and ridiculous amount of buttons make an interesting juxtaposition. While I do agree that the imagery of the collection is quite dark, I hope it simultaneously shows that we don’t think too highly of ourselves. In the end of the day, we create clothes because we think it is fun.

With our SS26 Smog Collection, we tried to focus on the materials and craftsmanship of the garments. The smog itself is portrayed through the natural dyed green colour extracted from pomegranate peels. I like the contrast of talking about air pollution while using organic materials and natural dyes. I hope the contrast makes others want to read more about it.

IRK: You take great care in making each piece, using natural dyes such as avocado stones. How did you develop this approach, and what does this slow, hands-on process give you that industrial production cannot?

Permanent: Luckily, we do work with a manufacturer that can natural dye our collections, though their colours are limited. Therefore, I do lots of natural dyeing myself in our atelier. In the beginning, it was difficult to find information regarding this craftsmanship. I bought a lot of self-published books and spent hours scrolling through natural dyeing Facebook groups where often older people would share their knowledge.

The natural dyeing takes tremendous amounts of time to such an extent that we would have to charge crazy amounts for each garment if we wanted to make a decent profit. Most pieces need three different baths of 1.5 hours each before the natural dyeing can even start. However, it is such a meditative act that I truly enjoy doing and don’t mind charging too little on these items. It always feels like I have travelled back in time. It is wild to think that I am using similar techniques as people did thousands of years ago.

Besides the calmness it gives, the end result of the natural dyed colours is stunning. These are tones that you won’t be able to find in a Pantone book. The natural dyed fabrics often come with irregularities which I actually find beautiful. It is inevitable that every garment is slightly unique and that is what makes it special. Industrial production generally only produces the same perfectly looking garments. We enjoy the odd ones.

IRK: Between sourcing deadstock, organic fibers, or recycled textiles, what is the reality of finding sustainable fabrics today without compromising on the final silhouette?

Permanent: Nowadays, there is more possible than a lot of people think. While I would love to support some innovative new fabrics, these are unfortunately often expensive. While we do hope to grow to such an extent that we can use anything we want, we do stick to the more classic fabrics for now. Namely organic cotton and linen.

I have always seen limitations as a great source of creativity. When one has to work within boundaries, creative solutions will always start to appear. That is how most of our ideas for garments arise. As someone who likes timeless designs, I enjoy using these well known materials. For example, people in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt used linen. I feel honoured to use materials that people have appreciated for such a long time.

The Architecture of an Honest Garment

IRK: Pricing transparency is almost unheard of in fashion. Yet, you publish the full cost breakdown of every garment. What exactly do you want people to understand when they see those numbers? How do you compete when most people still choose price over a sustainable piece of clothing?

Permanent: Due to fast fashion, lots of people tend to think that paying a few euro for a t-shirt should be the norm. The materials, techniques and low quantity production that we use makes our garments more expensive than others. I would like to show that we aren’t making an insane profit on each garment while we could sell it for way less. The pricing transparency tab on our product page gives a good indication of how we decide on a certain price. This does not mean that people will rather buy an item from us now, but it hopefully does mean that they get a better understanding of how the industry works.

The Belgian designer Bruno Pieters used to do this with his brand Honest By and ever since it has inspired me to do the same.

IRK: You built Permanent on the belief that fashion can exist differently. If someone walks away from this interview with one reason to care, one reason to choose differently, what would you want that to be?

Permanent: We constantly face the conundrum of wanting to grow without growing too much. Getting larger as a brand would definitely help with being able to develop interesting garments with more innovative sustainable techniques. Our collections will always keep on taking long to produce due to the techniques, which makes our growth slower than many other brands.

I think it is most important to do what you truly enjoy and that is what Permanent is for us now. We don’t need to grow fast because that would hinder our process. Once you learn more about a certain subject such as clothing, you start to ask more questions, much like we did when we first investigated the suffocating nature of Smog. This will automatically make you change your thoughts and actions.

IRK: Is there anything you wish I had asked?

Permanent: If anyone has any questions regarding our garments or natural dyeing, they could always send us a message, and I will try to answer. It is important to us that our knowledge is shared!