Pop-Up Recycled Fashion

From Somewhere is the recycled clothing line by Fashion Revolution co-founder Orsola de Castro. A couple weeks ago she hosted a pop-up shop in her studio in Peckham for a few different designers and I decided to swing by.

I passed through around lunch on a Saturday and a couple of the designers took me around to see all the different collections. They gave me a crash-course in the different approaches to 'recylced' fashion and I thought I'd share some of what I learned with you.

Recycled Fabric

Officially called using 'pre-consumer surplus from manufacturing houses and textile mills' A lot of the ethical designers buy up remnants from other designers collections or fabric or clothing manufacturers and then use them to produce their own collections. I've bought designer remnants before on Queen St. in Toronto, my biggest find being a piece of green Versace stretch-silk for a semi-formal affair. Despite that person experience, I have to admit, I've never really thought about excess fabric from clothing manufacturing. I sort of assumed that it would end up being bought by individual sewers like myself.

But given how many clothing lines exist, there is a lot more extra fabric than individual sewers can buy up. And a huge portion of the impact of producing clothing is actually producing the fabric, and by reusing other people's fabrics you are reducing all of that.

One of my favourtie, recylced fabric pieces was the wrap vest on the dummy. It has a vest back and the front pieces have a tiny button on every point so it can be pinned up in different ways.

Discarded Garments

Some of the designers actually used discarded, 'flawed' or extra items of clothes. Any production line will end up with a few flaws or there are clothing pieces that get made but just aren't sold.  A lot of that clothing ends up in the trash, but some creative re-working and it can be saved.

I thought the coolest example of this was the jeans featured in the picture above. A lot of jeans are distressed post-production because otherwise you can end up with 'distressed' fabric in awkward places.  However, the distressing sometimes goes a bit too far even and the jeans can't be sold. This designer is rescuing those jeans and turning them into bags, skirts and shorts.

Up-Cycled Used Clothing

The final clothing I saw, was the recycling of used-clothing. These pieces are made from clothing that have previously been worn. There are obvious challenge is re-working existing garments, as someone who has tried to alter or rework second-hand clothes can attest. A really popular technique is to patchwork them into new items. I think they make some truly amazing pieces. The designer featured above is a great example of this and my favourite Toronto option, Pre-Love, does this so well!

I couldn't exactly leave without making some small investment. I picked up one of these great multi-coloured vests. I really like tucking it into a fitted skirt or pair of jeans. 

To check out some of these and other recycled designers collections more closely:

From SomeWhere
Here Today Here Tomorrow
and there will be a small capsul collection soon in Viola

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