From Miu Miu to Coach, upcycling is moving beyond sustainability capsules into
mainstream fashion as brands highlight the design and uniqueness of their products
as much as — if not more than — their sustainability benefits.
At Paris Couture Week this spring, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier closed the season with an
industry first: a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands.
Each of the 25 looks, which ranged from heavily embellished sculptural jackets and dresses to
maximalist and avant garde gowns that mimic coral reefs, was constructed from breaking down and
reworking unsold clothes that would’ve otherwise been discarded.
Upcycling, which typically involves used or unsold clothes being reworked into new products, has
long been viewed as a niche practice associated with small, independent designers, such as
Marine Serre or Conner Ives; sustainable labels such as Patagonia and E.L.V. Denim; or secondhand markets. But collections like Germanier’s show how it’s not only growing, but moving closer to the mainstream.
This year, Miu Miu launched a new upcycled collection with singer Suki Waterhouse as its face,
expanding on the upcycling programme it introduced in 2020 with reworked vintage dresses to
include items such as denim and leather. Coach has increased its own upcycling efforts with Coach
Repurposed, sourcing used denim and making it into new products from shirts and jackets into
new bags, after first getting into upcycling with its handbag-centric (Re)Loved collection five years
ago.
High street giant Uniqlo, meanwhile, has been experimenting with remaking unsellable and used
garments through its Re:Uniqlo programme, most recently partnering with Central Saint Martins graduates to transform pieces into one-of-a-kind upcycled designs. And brands including Converse, Wrangler and Vivenne Westwood have also released upcycled lines.
Smaller brands that have built upcycling into their businesses, meanwhile, are seeing a rise in
requests from bigger players to collaborate, producing collections such as Barbour’s work with
END, Norwegian outdoor brand Norrøna’s collection with Recouture.
A convergence of forces is driving the uptick. Crucially, the way upcycled fashion is positioned and
perceived is changing as brands increasingly market upcycled products based on their creativity,
uniqueness and provenance — attributes resonating with consumers looking for distinctive pieces
with a story — rather than foregrounding their sustainability benefits.
At the same time, new infrastructure is making used textiles and excess material easier to source
and process, while regulation is giving brands more incentive to find new uses for waste. In the EU,
a ban on destroying unsold clothing and footwear came into force for large companies in July,
while extended producer responsibility, or EPR,schemes are increasingly requiring brands to help
pay for the collection, sorting and treatment of textiles they put on the market. These forces are
giving brands more incentive to embrace upcycling than just a few years ago.
“These aren’t brands that are looking at us as an experiment or a capsule or a pilot,” said Elyse
Winer, chief marketing officer of Gen Phoenix, which turns leather waste into material for partners
such as Coach and Dr Martens.
The rise in upcycling should offer hope to fashion sustainability advocates. By making new
products from clothes and fabrics that already exist, upcycling can extend their life, divert textile
waste from overflowing secondhand markets, and also reduce the need for virgin materials.
However, critics say the term is increasingly stretched to cover very different practices, including
making clothes from deadstock materials or manufacturing scraps. While all keep existing
materials in circulation, some contest whether the latter should be considered upcycling at all, and
argue it does little to address fashion’s overproduction.
All versions of upcycling also face barriers to scaling up. Working with waste — particularly post
consumer clothing — is more labour intensive and unpredictable than sourcing new materials. It
requires businesses to collect, sort and process garments that vary in colour, condition and
composition even before they can be reworked, while existing supply chains are largely designed
around working with standardised materials.
Upcycling’s proponents hope a combination of shifting consumer attitudes and changes to the
infrastructure around fashion waste will slowly begin to chip away at some of these obstacles.
The Key Drivers for ‘Upcycling’
One of the biggest shifts driving interest in upcycled clothing is that its use of old or discarded
materials has gone from a potential drawback to part of the product’s appeal, as brands
increasingly sell upcycling through design, individuality and provenance rather than sustainability
alone.
At Indian brand I Was A Sari, which transforms used saris into new clothes and accessories, chief
executive Stefano Funari sees the growing number of brands embracing upcycling as going hand
in-hand with a shift in how consumers perceive it. Where customers once needed reassurance
about wearing previously used material. Today, its upcycled origins have become a selling point
rather than a barrier to purchase, he said.
At the same time, upcycled fashion is moving beyond a niche associated with vintage, luxury or a
particular sustainable lifestyle, according to I Was A Sari marketing director Smitha Jyotsna. I Was
A Sari customers today might own Gucci, Zara and one of its pieces in the same wardrobe, which
was not the case when the brand started more than a decade ago. “You don’t have to be someone
very distinct to have an upcycled piece in your closet any more,” Jyotsna said.
Coach is one brand that’s taken advantage of this shift. Steven Bethell, chief executive of Bank &
Vogue, which supplies materials to Coach for its RePurposed collection, said the brand was
quicker than others in foregrounding the elevated aesthetics of the product and the story of the
materials rather than leading its customer messaging with the environmental case.
“They just told the aesthetic story and it worked,” Bethell said. “Is it good for the planet and use
clothes that already exist, absolutely, but it’s also something that speaks to people,” he said.
Better infrastructure is also making used clothes and excess materials easier to access for
upcycling. Across Europe, investment in textile sorting is growing, including efforts to automate
the process using AI.
Meanwhile, sourcing deadstock has become more streamlined. Five years ago, figuring out what
excess fabric existed was arduous and time-consuming, involving tracing supply chains, negotiating
with mills and combing through catalogues and physical swatches. Today, businesses such as
LVMH-backed Nona Source and UK-based The Materialist catalogue excess materials and
connect them directly with designers and brands, which increasingly consider using deadstock
materials and no longer treat them like a “dirty secret,” said The Materialist co-founder Liv Khan.
(Another incentive: They are typically around 60 percent cheaper than producing comparable new
fabric, Khan said.)
A wave of regulations is simultaneously pushing brands to find new uses for their old clothing.
Extended producer responsibility schemes are making brands financially responsible for what
happens to clothes after they are sold, while the EU’s ban on destroying unsold apparel and
footwear means large companies can no longer simply dispose of products they fail to sell.
Especially in luxury, the rules make creating collections like Germanier’s more appealing.
Can Upcycling Go Mainstream?
Not everyone is convinced upcycling will become standard practice, however, particularly at big
brands. Bobby Kolade, founder of Kampala-based Buzigahill, which turns secondhand clothes
imported into Uganda into new garments and has steadily gained stockists in Japan, sees much of
the activity among major fashion brands as limited projects rather than a fundamental shift in
production.
“I don’t believe that it’s actually being embraced if it’s just tied to hype,” he said.
Scaling volumes remains one of upcycling’s biggest challenges. Swedish brand Deadwood
originally reconstructed vintage leather jackets sourced in Bangkok, but as orders reached the
thousands, maintaining consistent sourcing and quality became increasingly difficult, said founder
and chief executive Felix von Bahder. Around 2016, it expanded offerings to reworked factory
offcuts and rejected hides.
For Danish label Bonnetje, which makes tailored suits from existing garments, the challenge is
fitting one-of-a-kind products into a wholesale system built around uniformity. Co-founder Anna
Myntekær said the brand has developed ways to make individual pieces similar enough in
construction and colour to be sold as repeatable styles, but buyers still need predictable sizing,
imagery and inventory that can slot into conventional e-commerce systems.
Industrialising upcycling of used garments also involves considerably more investment than
cutting apart old clothes and sewing them back up. To meet the requirements of large brands,
Bethell said Bank & Vogue has spent years developing systems around washing, testing, thickness,
colour, sorting and grading. Countries may also have rules against importing what they see as
textile waste, preventing upcycled materials from entering the market.
Sammy Oteng, head of fashion development at non-profit The Or Foundation, said upcyclers in
countries in the Global South such as Chile, Ghana, India and Pakistan have been doing so at large
scales, with generational expertise, for years. Their businesses, however, exist largely outside the
Western fashion system and its usual ways of operating.
For now, Gen Phoenix’s Winer said for upcycling to truly become standard, the fashion industry
will need to adapt, moving away from traditional sourcing built around predictable virgin inputs
and transactional supplier relationships, and investing more in used and discarded materials,
which require closer coordination across multiple parts of the supply chain.
“Innovation requires change on the part of the brand, not just on the material itself,” she said.
A growing number of fashion brands from Kevin Germanier to I Was A Sari are making it work,
and there are those who believe it’s possible industrywide. Bethell said Bank & Vogue has now
provided materials for five Dr Martens collections, 17 collaborations with Converse and is
expanding from Coach’s Coachtopia to supplying the brand’s broader business.
“If I can scale it for Converse and Nike, and I can scale it for Coach, I’ve proven that it can be done,”
he said. “Used can be an input to new at scale.”
