With an estimated 250,000 tents discarded at festivals each year alone, designer Jess O’Riley isn’t going to let such valuable material go to waste.
Jess O’Riley launched her Manchester-based brand, J.O.STUDIO, in 2023 as part of her graduate collection at the Manchester Fashion Institute, driven by a clear mission: “to spread the message: take your tent home.” A dedicated festival-goer herself, O’Riley was well aware of the growing problem of abandoned tents left behind after festivals. Many attendees bring tents with no intention of taking them back, creating a sprawling tent graveyard. Volunteers like O’Riley step in to recover what they can, bringing awareness to the issue with her social media posts: ‘there’s no such thing as the tent fairy’ and transforming the discarded materials she collects into accessories and apparel designed for fellow festival lovers.
The salvage team O’Riley is a part of is linked with Care4Calais, a refugee charity collecting 2-man tents for use in the Calais “jungle”, a migrant camp near the port of Calais. The charity works exclusively with Truck Festival and twice O’Riley has attended the mid-sized festival in Oxfordshire, collecting first for Care4Calais, before helping herself. Even before J.O.STUDIO, she says, “I was already focused on circular design and knew that to build a brand that could grow sustainably, I needed a consistent stream of post-consumer waste,” and tents were the perfect solution.
“Technically, they’re great, full of functional elements like toggles, zips, and pockets, and the fabric is lightweight and water-resistant,” says O’Riley. The pieces, which currently include different bag silhouettes, are 100% recycled material and utilize the functional elements of a tent, such as zips, neon guide ropes as straps and the body of the tents, quilted in a contrast colors with a star design, for the main bag canvas.
The functionality of the designs is their biggest pro; they are made from festivals, and that is what O’Riley channels when designing: “That connection to music, movement, and nightlife definitely influences my work. I want the pieces I make to be functional and practical for a night out (I usually wear them on a trial run while dancing!)”, She says.
J.O.STUDIO pieces are made from polyester and nylon (the two main materials used for making tents), being durable–dance proof– and waterproof fabrics, they are great to be recycled, but being plastics and derived from petroleum (fossil fuel), unless reused, they decompose at an alarmingly slowly. Any tents not saved from festivals go straight to landfills, and O’Riley admits she finds it hard to understand her own generation’s wastefulness, saying “It’s as if the impact of that one weekend is forgotten the moment the music stops, with little thought given to how it affects the natural landscape.”
If you have ever been to a festival, you will also know how the grounds are left: tents forgotten, churned-up grass, and mountains of rubbish. Almost every part of a festival is the antithesis of the place it is held, like Truck, which is located in the countryside of Oxfordshire. “It’s a mid-size event, but the waste is still staggering,” O’Riley says.
Although J.O.STUDIO was first inspired by festivals, the idea to repurpose tents came from a solo backpacking trip in Scotland, where O’Riley found a brand new tent sticking out of the bin at her campsite. “I was curious about its construction and intrigued by the material, so I strapped it to the back of my bike and cycled it all the way back to Manchester,” she says. Each tent she collects is washed and taken apart before being reimagined into her collection of designs. “It’s about making sustainability more accessible”, she says, but she hasn’t stopped there.
In January this year, O’Riley co-created and launched Making Room, a micro factory and rentable studio space, supporting small-scale and local production. Connecting designers to skilled makers, O’Riley wants to build “a slow fashion ecosystem right here in Manchester, one that helps people grow their technical skills, experiment, and build independent brands,” she says. J.O.STUDIO is one of the resident brands taking part in Making Room; they go hand-in-hand, “built around circular design and ethical manufacturing”; however, she hopes more Manchester creatives join and take part. So far, they have already held a cushion community sewing workshop, from donated and upcycled fabrics donated by Fibrelab, and a keyring workshop at Nice One Mcr, “a local event championing northern creatives, music and culture.”
Most recently, J.O.STUDIO has been chosen for the 2025 GFF Accelerator Programe, which will help to “grow the business side of J.O.STUDIO, connect with mentors, and build long-term confidence in the brand,” she says. This help, along with her plans to expand and collaborate, means J.O.STUDIO is in for a big year, in which she plans on refining her wearable apparel for general sale and continuing to develop her core products, keeping them as fair and affordable as possible. O’Riley plans on attending more festivals this year, both for work and fun (she has to test her designs somewhere!)
All imagery courtesy of the artist.
