Upcycling

Written by Marge Pietrera

We all want and need to do our best to take care of our planet to slow down the current acceleration pattern of consumer waste. As the US economy grew post World War II, so did the consumer's desire for single-use items.

This mindshift was not just about bottles and cans but extended across products including apparel. The US consumer developed a throw away mindset driven by corporate desire for increased profits.

If a company makes a product that lasts for 20 years, the consumer will only buy the product once every 20 years. If the same company makes a lower quality product with built-in obsolescence so it lasts for 3 years, the consumer will be forced to buy products more often. This business model provides the opportunity for companies to have a more consistent, and generally higher, revenue stream.

This is the difference between slow and fast fashion. Today many in the fashion industry are working to change the excessive consumption mindset and reduce their environmental impact. As part of this upcycling is gaining traction which helps our planet. We are highlighting upcycling this Earth Day.

Upcycling In Fashion

Upcycling is part of the ‘reuse’ in the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’ However, instead of just using a product again, upcycling transforms that object into something of perceived higher quality and/or value.

Reimaging garments is not a new idea and has been embedded in the way of life across history. High society women of the Elizabethan era (c. 1600) wore voluminous gowns made from yards and yards of high quality fabric. When a woman no longer wanted to wear a gown, it was taken apart at the seams and remade into suits for her husband or other clothes for her children. In the 1800s, gowns would be sent back to the shops to be updated with the newest trends in sleeves and collars rather than being discarded.

During the Great Depression, families had no money to purchase clothes so women repurposed the cotton sacks used for packaging flour, sugar, livestock feed, ect. into clothing for their children. When companies learned their fabrics were being used this way, they began making the cotton in different colors and patterns. 

Challenges Of Commercial Upcycling

Transportation of materials is one of many difficulties in large-scale upcycling projects. A company may have a shipping container full of deadstock they want to get rid of or even donate, but it may be in a different city or state than the destination facility. The logistics of moving items available for upcycling are time consuming and expensive.

Secondly, there has often been a stigma for customers around ‘used’ clothing or options. However, Gen Z and younger consumers don’t see ‘used’ as a detriment. Many grew up revering vintage clothing and they understand that upcycling a product takes the best of the original product and makes it more valuable.

On the up side, the fashion industry is moving towards incorporating the idea of upcycling into the production process. However, standard industry practice is to have the goods/fabric come on a roll, roll out onto a table, lay down the pattern, and then cut. Upcycling doesn’t always fit into that mold. Building out systems that incorporate methods that work for upcycling is actively happening. 

Today, upcycling is no longer only something that individuals do at home for their family. There are now businesses that are trying to level up the impact of upcycling while proving it as a profitable business model.

Creating a business model that includes upcycling is not a simple task. Even 5 years ago, ‘upcycling’ was not a known term so a lot of consumer education was required. Transportation is costly and has an environmental impact from carbon emissions.

Additionally, by its very nature, upcycling is incredibly labor intensive. This adds cost to the end products making them less affordable options for many. So how do they do it? These companies use direct donations, source vintage items, or use deadstock from other companies using small lot production to make as little environmental impact as possible in production.

Our selection of global upcyclers specialize in garments, accessories, and footwear to give options in many fashion categories.

Image courtesy MOOT

MOOT, Berlin, Germany

MOOT (made out of trash) is a new Berlin-based brand with a retail space divided into a store and a showroom. The founders Michael Pfeifer and Nils Neubauer believe the showroom provides an educational experience for their diverse customer base. Within the space, there are five bundles of clothes stacked with a large sign that translates to ‘The Environmental Sin of Fast Fashion.’

The enormous amount of textile waste that occurs, especially in fast-fashion, spurred the idea for this brand. The brand concept is to produce mainstream clothing from existing textiles and thus make truly sustainable fashion attractive for everyone. They also strongly believe in fair labor and environmentally conscious production practices.

MOOT wants to draw attention to the fact that valuable textiles are disposed of far too early and that supposed waste can be transformed into high-quality clothing. For example, donated bed linens become shirts and dresses, old woolen blankets are transformed into stylish coats, and pillowcases are reconstructed into study totes. 

Image via fanfarelabel.com

Fanfare Label, United Kingdom and Portugal

Fanfare Label is an award-winning, sustainable fashion brand tackling the fashion waste crisis. Disposal of used clothing creates 350,000 tons of waste going into just UK landfills each year.

Fanfare Label aspires to a circular economy standard and is leading the upcycling movement in the UK. They transform vintage pieces into unique contemporary designs, combining elements of vintage and surplus clothing giving existing materials a new life. They design and create their clothing to last, through various techniques using rescued textiles and certified sustainable fabrics.

Fanfare Label was inspired by a 2019 statement from The Water and Resources Action Programme that says, ‘‘Extending the life and use of clothes is the most significant opportunity to reach carbon, water & waste emissions targets by 2030.”

Deadstock is created when clients cancel orders and or when mills make more than they need and are left with surplus fabric. This fabric is too often sent to landfills.

While Fanfare Label doesn’t like to encourage the use of deadstock materials because they want companies to only order what they will use, they strive to source deadstock from smaller enterprises that create less waste. They then take these small quantities of scrap fabric and use them to embellish jeans and upcycle other garments.

Image via roboro6.com

Roboro, United States and United Kingdom

Roboro is a waste solution and consulting company based in Los Angeles, CA. Their founder, Jillian Clark, became a costume designer after her ballet career. In this role, she became aware of the unimaginable waste from fast fashion and the resulting global impact.

Since its inception in 2017, Roboro’s mission has been to end textile waste. They understand upcycling requires highly skilled designers and craftsmen and that is one of the tenets upon which the company was built.  They also commit to having all of their products made from at least 90% upcycled materials.

Their designs are driven by the materials which also leads to them being one of a kind. They make garments, accessories, and homegoods to creatively use materials that would have otherwise become trash. 

Roboro is expanding to the east coast with a new base being created in Boston. The business has a retail aspect as well as they partner with like-minded companies looking to create a sustainable product. Roboro determines where textile waste is produced along the supply chain and what forms it takes: deadstocks, production scraps, clothing, blankets, etc. 

This knowledge allows Roboro to partner with additional companies and present solutions to lessen the partner company’s textile waste. Roboro is the go-between for the fragmented parts of the fashion supply chain where waste is falling in the cracks. They are building make-it-local networks to reduce the impact of transportation.

In addition to upcycling, Roboro spearheads a community clothing swap in Los Angeles. Their next swap is on Earth Day, 4/22/23. Learn more here.

Image via glamour.com

RE/DONE, United States

RE/DONE is a brand with the mission to create sustainable, mindful fashion in the luxury digital fashion space. The core of their brand is reimagining iconic heritage brands. Their original concept was upcycling vintage Levi’s by taking them apart and creating modern fits.

They use preloved raw goods to create brand new styles while extending the life of stagnant stock. Since their launch, RE/DONE has diverted more than 225,000 garments from a landfill, reconstructing them into coveted luxury collectables. 

They have also partnered with Hanes to recreate vintage-inspired tees. In this collaboration, Re/DONE X Hanes developed a brand new recycled cotton that was reverse engineered from a 1950s era tee that was found in the Hanes archive. The product line has been expanded to include tanks and sweats.

At first, sustainability was not an intentional part of the brand’s ethos. They have evolved with the times and are also working to extend the lifetime of their products. The brand launched a resale service in the US called Re/Sell, which allows their customers to sell previously purchased RE/DONE denim items in exchange for store credit. 

They now have retail stores in several cities worldwide.

Image via 10magazine.com

Tega Akinola, United Kingdom

Tega Akinola is a UK sport psychologist turned designer who was inspired by decluttering efforts while locked-down with her family during the pandemic. With a lot of time on her hands, she took a bag of assorted cords from electronics and a pair of old heels and went to work.

The first experience working with these materials went viral and garnered her a partnership with the conscious boutique APOC Store where she sells her work. To create objects for sale, she uses thrift-shop items as her base materials. Akinola likes juxtapositions, sporty and ladylike, casual and luxurious, old and new, and it shines through her work. 

Akinola believes that the uniqueness of her designs is rooted in their transparency. The obvious display of hardware, the celebration of a telling detail, and how those choices force us to rethink the original objects creates the magic.

Although Akinola readily admits that her first project was rooted in boredom rather than environmental consciousness, her designs call attention to the single fastest growing waste stream worldwide, electronic waste.

E-waste describes all types of old, end-of-life, or discarded electrical and electronic equipment that are not easily recyclable. A few accessories wrapped in cables will not be the solution to a problem of this magnitude, but they can start a conversation.

The point of upcycling is to use something that would end up otherwise destroyed. These designers and others are moving the world of fashion towards a better future by reusing existing garments and textiles to make new items to be loved. Supporting sustainable practices and products is a great way to help show the fashion industry that we care as much about the planet as we do about looking good.