King Charles Collaborates with Eco-Designers on a Surprising Fashion Project Involving Milk Cartons

Mar. 15, 2025

King Charles in the garden of Frogmore House on March 23, 2021.Photo:Chris Jackson/Getty

Chris Jackson/Getty

King Charlesis making his stamp on the fashion industry in a surprising way.

Collaborating with eco-designersVin + Omi, the King has provided hundreds of milk cartons from his Sandringham estate to produce an innovative “leather” that will form part of their upcoming fashion show.

While the unlikely trio have been working together for the last six years, this is the first material of its kind to be fashioned out of plastic milk cartons destined for the dump. The U.K.-based designers, considered to be the eco-rebels of the fashion industry, are thrilled with the result.

“It’s like a spongy leather — it’s really soft, and it looks and feels like leather,” Omi tells PEOPLE ahead of their “Kaos” show on Feb. 19, on the eve of London Fashion Week. “It took us about a year and a half, and it’s the first fabric like it in the world!”

Vin and Omi with King Charles at their exhibition in Sandringham in April 2024.Vin + Omi

Vin + Omi

“It suddenly dawned on us how many milk cartons were being used. On average in the U.K., we drink 1,238 milliliters of milk per week!” Omi says.

This is the second time the designers have collaborated with King Charles to make an entirely new sustainable fabric using waste products. In 2023, they worked with the head gardener at Sandringham to create a golden dress made from the leaves of the Butterbur plant, an invasive weed found on the banks of the lake at the King’s Norfolk estate.

A model wearing the Butterbur plant dress in September 2023 at Vin + Omi OMNIA show.Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty

Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty

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The unlikely relationship began in 2018 when Vin and Omi met the-then Prince Charles at a fashion event and impressed him with their innovative ideas on sustainability. Since then, the royal has given them an all-access pass to his gardens and been in regular contact with the pair, often suggesting ideas himself on different plants or waste material they should use next.

King Charles with Vin and Omi at a London Fashion Week event in 2018.Vin + Omi

In the last six years, the designers have been able to create whimsical dresses from thousands of harvested nettle leaves, crafted brooches from plastic plant trays and a sweater dress emblazoned with the word “Resist” made from piles of discarded royal horsehair, all salvaged from the compost heaps at Sandringham and Highgrove.

“Obviously working with the King is such a far-fetched dream,” says Omi from his studio in Norfolk. “I never sat back and thought, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be working with the King of England,’ and then it happened, but I thought it was a one-time thing!”

“It’s really nice. We have never asked him for anything, and I think that makes the relationship very pure because it’s about what we can all do to improve the environment. There’s no hidden agenda,” says the designer, who last caught up with the King in April last year after touring their “Royal Garden Waste to Fashion’s Future” exhibition at Sandringham together.

“We just walked ‘round, the three of us laughing. I don’t even remember talking about anything serious!” he says. “The King has such a ridiculous sense of humor and that really works for us, we were just laughing — you really have to laugh at some of the stuff we do, and he laughs a lot.”

“We want to create the spark and then somebody can light the flame!” the designer says. “Somebody has to start somewhere, and that’s our aim between Vin, myself and the King — to spark the interest and start the conversation.”

source: people.com