Dress to distress: fashion embraces the frayed, torn and deconstructed look

‘It’s ladders and things that look like they’re falling apart,’ says Benét Matthias of her designs. Photograph: PR Handout

From her four-bed house share in Hackney, east London, second year Central Saint Martins textiles student Benét Matthias is working on a backlog of knitwear orders. She didn’t set out to create a business so early on in her studies, but demand is high and she’s working at capacity.

“Most of my sales are from TikTok. I’m shipping around the world to America, the Netherlands, Spain – everywhere, really,” she says. “Customers are a mix of teenagers and people in their 20s, and most are women.”