Hillary Taymour gives practical gifts with a sustainable focus

A young woman in a white T-shirt sits on large table with a small dog and is surrounded by the paraphernalia of a clothes designer — scissors, paper rulers — Hillary Taymour often gives her own brand’s clothing as gifts © Tonje Thilesen

My mum was Christmas obsessed, so we would always have huge, extravagant Christmases, with the biggest tree on the lot. Decorating the tree was really important to her, and it still is. I grew up as an equestrian, so everything was pretty much horse themed and would get a horse-something as a gift.

Now the Christmas holidays are my true time off, when I don’t have to answer emails. It’s a great time to take space, be grateful for what I have achieved and look forward to next year’s goals. I take time for myself and find calm, but I also see family and friends.

I’m vegan, so when my friends invite me to their family’s celebrations it is always tricky. My own family is not even close to being vegan, so it’s hard for me to go home for those meals. But I do love a vegan pumpkin pie, it’s my favourite thing. I also usually go on a vacation with a friend. This year we might be going to the Middle East, to see the Northern Lights or to Thailand — we haven’t decided yet.

I love giving gifts but I am kind of a last-minute person so, unless it’s a very dear-to-my-heart person or a really significant event, like a 40th birthday, I don’t really plan. I went to the book fair in New York a couple of weekends ago and I got a few gifts there. I will collect things along the way to Christmas, but the chunk of it it’s going to be last minute.

I usually give gifts to 30 to 40 people during the holiday season, including people who work in our factories and our seamstresses. I give a lot of clothes. Whether it is thrifted clothes or Collina Strada clothes, it’s in my nature. For this one Christmas, when I was three or four, my parents got me a dressy pair of denim leggings with embroidery on them. They were just leggings that were printed to look like denim, so essentially they were the first jeggings. This outfit that I got for Christmas was my favourite thing ever; it changed my life.

Giving my own brand’s clothing might be truly out of convenience because it’s the easiest thing to do at the last minute, but I also think it’s a nice gesture. A lot of my friends want to support me, but I feel weird taking money from them, so I feel it’s an easy way to give my art to my friends without a monetary exchange.

When it comes to gifts I also like to go against the grain in terms of true consumerism and give something with a little education behind it. I love to give something that is sustainable, something that can change the way someone is consuming products on a daily basis.

I think I’ve saved thousands and thousands of water bottles just by giving a reusable water bottle for Christmas. I gave one to someone who was buying three bottles of water every single day, and now they told me they don’t buy any because they are given so much joy drinking out of my fancy water bottle instead. That’s 1,000 bottles of water saved a year, for just one person. It can make a difference.

Books are good gifts for parents to learn how to live in a more sustainable way and to understand my mentality of it all. Other things that I like giving are practical ways to be sustainable. People are always giving candles, so why not give a refillable candle that’s a little bit more earth friendly without bad fragrances or toxic chemicals?

The spirulina soap is made by a small black-owned business that I’ve been working with. The founder, Asia Grant, makes beautiful scents which are all organic. She literally makes the soap herself in her studio. There are a few bars that are called the misfits because they aren’t pretty enough to sell to stores, so I decided to sell them myself through the Collina Strada website. It’s a way of using soap waste. It’s really important to gift with your own ethos, even if it may contradict the person you are giving the gift to.

With the holidays everything is so much about gifting for the sake of giving and consumerism, but I feel there is a healthier way to consume. Even if just one person at your Christmas dinner table thinks, “oh that was such a good idea for a gift”, and then they start gifting green the next year, it can have a snowball effect.

Designer Hillary Taymour launched Collina Strada in 2008. The brand is known for its environmentally responsible focus, including upcycled materials and small production runs made locally in New York, as well as inclusive runway shows. In 2019, the brand was named a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham

‘Black Futures (One World)’, £18.99, pagesofhackney.co.uk