Avenir Vert Makes Clothes for a One-Of-A-Kind Girl

A peek into the evergrowing charm of local designer Olivia Donaghue’s upcycled designs.

By Eva Rizk ☆ Issue 1, Spring 2025

Photo via Avenir Vert.

Starting a small business isn’t easy work. Olivia Donaghue tells me this over FaceTime as she just returned from a retreat in Vermont to take a break from the overwhelming demand from her self-run brand, Avenir Vert. It’s now late January, the calm before the storm. The streets of Montreal are empty. Meanwhile, people rest from the holidays and small businesses take this time to recharge. But the girls in the city still buy slip dresses in the dead of winter to hang them in their closets as hope for what’s to come.

A one-woman show, Donaghue designs, sews, shoots, and models Avenir Vert’s pieces all on her own. She started her brand at 17 years old, back home in Boston, while in an entrepreneurship class. “I never really set out to be a designer, I really just loved fashion and sustainability,” she says. Yes, one of her passions was sustainability. Vegan since the age of 12, she tells me she was one of those girls with Save the Earth stickers plastered all over her water bottle. She had a vision for a brand that makes one-of-a-kind pieces, focused on sustainability instead of scale. It manifested into Avenir Vert.

“I started out by hand-sewing and watched one video about setting up a sewing machine after buying one,” she explains to me. As a Marketing graduate from Concordia, design was not part of her coursework. Determined to teach herself how to cut patterns and sew, fashion design became her life after school. 

With a growing community of over 4,000 followers on Instagram, she credits a lot of her motivation to the secondhand shoppers in Montreal. Even though she’s a girl from Boston, she found a home for her brand here, once she moved to the city for school. “I love the Montreal fashion community. I feel like everyone is really supportive of small brands and small artists. I feel like I couldn’t have done it without the little student runway shows.”

Feminine and delicate, you’ll find her pieces evoke the same youthful charm that labeled Miu Miu as Prada’s little sister. Though, the Avenir Vert girl buys all her clothes second-hand. “My customer is very fun, very feminine, and loves to dress up. I just can’t get enough of all of that,” she says as she praises her customers for sharing the same values as her brand. Inspired by Vivienne Westwood’s personality and Miu Miu’s flirtiness, she also lets the fabrics she upcycles inspire her tender designs. Whether it’s a mini skirt, a jacket, or a blouse, she’ll find anything to add a ruffled trim to.

Donahue runs Avenir Vert on her own and works on the brand full time. In 2024, she began designing made-to-order pieces. Though the business model was her most profitable, it was also the most grueling. “It’s so hard to walk away from that, when that’s everything I’ve worked for. […] It’s hard to be at the intersection of business and art.” Deciding she couldn’t push herself over her limits, she decided to return to making one-of-a-kind pieces halfway through the year.

Compared to your typical ready-to-wear brand, upcycling fabrics takes a little more attention-to-detail. Donaghue sources fabrics to repurpose at thrift stores and online. The struggle with the latter being receiving some with stains or damages which end up being unusable.  

In the age of the internet, running a small brand is not as glamorous as it seems. Many people find success through posting videos of their designs on TikTok or Instagram, which can amass thousands of views from people across the world. But the work isn’t cheap. If you run your brand on your own and aren’t inclined to have a big presence on social media, you might find yourself in a moral dilemma. “I choose to not participate in influencer and TikTok culture as much as I can,” Donaghue says, “It’s so toxic and it all ties into the overconsumption thing because people are thinking they need a new outfit for every event.” 

But are Instagram reels and TikToks the key to success nowadays? “I have this back and forth with myself all the time,” she continues, “I know what would help me is if I did these little videos where I’m like filming myself making clothes and putting cute music over it. I just can’t do it. I prefer to put my head down and have my work speak for itself.” Of course, like any good Gen Z, it’s hard to stay away from it. “I can’t lie, I love videos like that but it’s just not me,” she admits, “I know doing that type of thing would really help me because they get so much engagement, but this is one of the things I have to be gentle with myself about.”

The key to building a good closet, according to Donaghue, is good fashion education and trying clothes on in person. Good wardrobe staples like high-quality sweaters and good-fitting jeans are good investments that can take you from season-to-season, she tells me. But, for her, the most fun lies in shopping around the secondhand boutiques and thrift stores in the city. “For me, I have the most fun going somewhere and trying things on to see what looks good on me and just doing it the old-fashioned way,” she says, “I think styles can get muddled in your head if you’re just watching what people are wearing online. It’s fun to allow yourself to put it together and put your phone away and be with yourself to shop.”

Want more?