Byredo and Bentgablenits Have Collaborated on a Set of Upcycled, One-of-a-Kind Keepsakes

You may already be familiar with Bentgablenits from the Nike sweatshirts they upcycled with mohair swooshes (and packaged with a tiny Barbie brush, for grooming), or their collection of embroidered and embellished vintage Levi’s—an ongoing partnership that seems to be the first of many since BGN formed in 2019. Today, the Toronto-based trio, made up of Angelo Nitsopolous, Brenda Bent and Karen Gable, debuts a new addition to their zero-waste design philosophy: As a way to subvert the throwaway packaging issue in beauty, a problem that rivals the scale of fast fashion, Byredo founder Ben Gorham tapped BGN to create a limited-edition Valentine’s Day box that will live forever. Inside, there’s far more than one might expect from a boutique collaboration.

“One day I asked him, why don’t we just redo the packaging on a fragrance box?” says Nitsopolous of a conversation with Gorham (the pair met a few years ago through a mutual friend) that led to months of dreaming, dying, and hand-sewing ideas for what would house Byredo’s Bibliothèque Eau de Parfum bottles and candles. “The idea of Bibliothèque was echoing this idea of meaningfulness and thoughtfulness,” Gorham tells Vogue. BGN’s slow, considered process paired perfectly with his olfactory vision of a library, or “a place suspended in time sheltered from everything that goes fast in our life.” 

What surfaced in the Vintage Bloom collection has multiple layers: silk velvet pouches lined with upcycled painter’s cloth to hold Byredo scents, cashmere-blend blankets, and embroidered deadstock t-shirts—the one-of-a-kindness of it all is inspiring, as are the hundreds of components it took to create what’s described by Byredo as “limited quantities” available for sale. It makes sense when you realize that Bent and Gable were creating everything by hand, from home, while waiting for construction on their Toronto studio to wrap. 

“This was a different challenge because it wasn’t just clothing that we were doing, it started out with product,” says Gable on a group Zoom call. The trio were tasked with figuring out how to create permanent packaging for Gorham’s Byredo offerings. “His thing is that perfume is sort of about ‘collective memories,’ so we riffed off that,” Bent adds. The phrase is stitched onto shirts, along with a heart that surrounds their brand names “because it’s a Valentine’s collab.” As the trio explains their process and retraces the past couple of months they spent dedicating all of their (three person) power to the project, it’s clear that they poured their lives into it. “What we do, not a lot of people can really do,” says Nitsopolous. “The craftsmanship is on another level, and it’s pretty time consuming.”