Warm Metal
What’s your name and where are you from/based?
My name is Tea, but more importantly, my brand’s name is Warm Metal – a London born and based clothing brand.
Can you describe your practice in a few words?
I like to play with materials and objects. With Warm Metal that play means designing transformable clothing, that encourages the wearers to continue the play, re-imagine the pieces and ultimately have fun.
What first inspired you to launch Warm Metal and what does the name mean to you?
I always wanted to have a clothing brand and after one attempt at doing so, I decided it’s time to re-brand and start fresh. The name means very little to me: I had long COVID and had smell damage for a year after. When doing an MRI I was given a CD with copies of my brain scans. The program on the CD allowed to add different filters to the scans (kind of like Photoshop) and one of the filters was called Warm Metal.
You describe Warm Metal as creating clothes that are more like gadgets, multi-use, and adaptable. How did this shape your approach to fashion design?
I’d say my approach to fashion design is what shaped the idea behind Warm Metal’s transformable clothing. When you get into designing clothes, or even styling, you start to understand them as ‘malleable’ objects in a way, their ‘intended’ purpose or size changes. You start to explore beyond it. So a skirt can now be a top, or a T-shirt 3 sizes bigger, can be a dress etc. So it made me start thinking how we often don’t use the full potential and playfulness of clothes, we tend to follow these predetermined rules of what is our ‘correct’ size or the ‘correct’ way of wearing a garment. With this big looming issue of fashion waste, it seems silly not to start using the full potential of a single garment, how it can be transformed and re-styled to avoid unnecessary consumption.
By designing for longevity and adaptability, you’re asking people to shift how they think about fashion itself. What conversations do you hope this sparks around consumption?
Absolutely! I hope we move away from this all-encompassing trend of quantity over quality. This is not just in fashion or in the way we consume physical ‘stuff’ it’s on our social media, streaming platforms etc. But, with fashion I do hope the narrative shifts towards understanding how clothing is made, how to treat it with more care and allow it to live in our wardrobes (and not landfills) for longer.
When you’re developing a piece that can be worn many ways, what does the design process look like? Where do you start?
I start by simplifying the shape to a point where I cannot go any further. For example: what’s the bare-minimum a trouser needs to have before it stops being a trouser? Probably a crotch and two holes for the legs. So everything else, like curved seams, darts etc can go. And the next step is giving it enough space for playing. The final step is to give this blank canvas some tools i.e. straps, channels and strings, so the wearer can play with it.
The Apr10n started as a simple rectangular apron, how did you realize this could expand into an entire system of clothing?
That’s a good question! I guess I just wondered if this principle can be applied to other types of clothing like a basic trouser, a basic skirt, a basic dress etc.
How did you come up with the FLOWER Scarf?
The FLOWER Scarf is part of the AW25/26 collection which is all about florals for winter, so I wanted to see how far I can embed the flower motif into each piece of the collection. Being a winter collection, it needed a scarf of sorts, so the idea came that it would actually be a string of individual padded flowers that can be arranged in different ways, like building blocks. Of course this wasn’t enough so I thought: usually you’d wear a hat and gloves with your scarf, so can three of the flowers in the string also be a hat and a pair of mittens?
Do you envision your transformable designs moving beyond fashion into other fields, like furniture, wearables, or lifestyle objects?
Perhaps? I think there is still lots to explore within clothing, and this is where my main knowledge lies, but I am open to expanding.
Where can people find you?
If you want to follow the process, WM is on socials under @warm.metal. If you want to shop WM, UK customers can do so on the website www.warm-metal.com, for Canada you can find WM online on www.lignesdefuite.organd starting in September 2025 the AW25/26 will be in a few stores across Japan (check our stockist list on our website for more info).
