"Where do you get your materials?"

The number one question I get asked, and why I'm happy to share my sources

Coming off of last Saturday’s popup, I had originally planned to share a little recap of the event- what went well, what I learned for next time, etc. After doing this ‘retrospective’ exercise for myself I got stuck on how to translate it into an interesting post… until I looked past my tactical notes and observations (make a sign, get a better tablecloth) and mentally replayed all of the great conversations I had with various friends who stopped by- btw thanks friends for coming out to support!!!

The theme that came up again and again? Just HOW MUCH textile waste is out there, why I’m excited about getting creative with the materials we already have, and the potential for remanufacturing.

The Problem

There are a lot of stats floating around that attempt to quantify the massive volume of textile waste generated every year (nearly 100 millions tons). This recent Vestiaire Collective campaign took the story a step further, helping to visualize the enormity of the problem and put it into more relatable terms:

Vestiaire Collective is a luxury resale marketplace, similar to TheRealReal

I’ve come to realize, though, that the numbers I personally find most disturbing are the ones that illuminate overproduction and oversupply, not just the ‘post-consumer’ waste.

Off the cuff, I wonder if this is because I (we) are more ‘comfortable’ with our own consumption and waste? We have first-hand experience wearing our clothes, (maybe but probably not) wearing them out, and eventually discarding them in one way or another. Of course it’s all tied together, the more we produce → the more we consume → the more we discard. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve bought, sold, and donated a lot of clothes over the years, far more than I could ever ‘need’.

But overproduction feels somehow more hidden, and maybe that’s why it feels more shocking (to me). It speaks to a deeper, systemic problem: why is it cheaper, and ‘good business’ to produce significantly more than we’re able to consume? There is a LOT more to unpack here about the business of fashion (future post?), but for now I’ll share a few stats that blow me away:

• We really produce an insane amount of clothing; More than 100 billion pieces of clothing are produced each year. This number has more than doubled since 2000.

• A huge portion of it ultimately goes unsold. And it’s not just fast fashion, even luxury brands (theoretically associated with scarcity) are up to their neck in overstock. The value of excess inventory held by luxury fashion’s biggest groups has grown to billions of dollars over the last decade, reaching €3.2 billion at LVMH and €1.5 billion at Kering last year.

And of course numbers aren’t the only story to tell.

I recently had a conversation with circular fashion designer Ayana Ames, founder of Am.A-line, about her journey from traditional ‘linear’ brand to remanufacturing / circularity. We met through the Circular Fashion Coalition, a community & weekly working group created by The Untangling Circularity Podcast hosts Cynthia Power & Laura Novich (quick shoutout to the Cynthia & Laura, it’s been such a joy participating in the coalition and meeting a diverse group of circular fashion practitioners and advocates).

A few years back, Ayana launched her menswear brand Am.A-Line. She designed a few pieces, and the factory she worked with to produce these designs required a minimum order of 200 units per style (MOQs are standard in the garment manufacturing industry and larger factories require a minimum of thousands of units). But when COVID hit, she was stuck with hundreds of units of unsold inventory, boxed and sitting in her house, taking up space. She made a very practical decision not to design and produce new products but instead to work with the materials she already had.

Where "Reworking" Got Me

Her recent post gives a behind-the-scenes peek into her process for re-working these garments into new designs. And her experience painted such a vivid picture for me. It just didn’t make sense to order 100s of new styles when the old ones were sitting right there, filling up her house. It made me think- what if apparel brands were forced to keep all of their unsold inventory right in their office? No stashing it away in warehouses, cutting it up, or burning it. I’d like to believe that physically confronting this surplus day-in and day-out would prompt a lot more creativity & innovation around using existing materials.

The Opportunity

It’s clear we have a glut of textile ‘finished goods’, both pre-consumer (unsold inventory) and post consumer (clothing that has been worn to a varying degree). There is a huge opportunity to get more value out of these items, and the solution space is growing:

• Repair / Refurb - even though it feels significantly easier to just replace things vs repair them, there is a growing category of service-providers aiming to help consumers & brands repair & increase the longevity of their clothing and shoes.

• Rental / Resale - Consumers have embraced rental and resale (Rent the Runway, TheRealReal, ThreadUp, Poshmark, Ebay, etc.), and finally brands are jumping on board too. There has been a lot of investment into these tools that enable better distribution of secondhand goods and ultimately extend the lifespan of the garments.

• Recycling - In the US, less than 15% of textile post-consumer waste (mostly clothing) that ends up in Municipal Solid Waste streams gets recycled - as a point of comparison, 68% of paper & paperboard gets recycled. Less than 1% of old clothing goes on to make new clothing. But, we are starting to invest in the capabilities and tools to sort and recycle textiles & clothing, through mechanical and chemical processes.

The case for remanufacturing

I think remanufacturing sits in a sort-of gray area between repair / refurbishment and recycling. It goes a step beyond patching a hole, and stops before throwing a garment into a shredder or chemical process for recycling. And I like to think that this ambiguity opens the door to a wide range of creative definitions and applications.

Potential benefits:

• Allows for a creative re-imagining of excess inventory garments into new, higher-value pieces, vs risking diluting brand image by selling items at a steep markdown and / or offloading overstock to downstream discount sellers.

• Creates opportunities for new and creative storytelling, turning ‘open secret’ of excess & waste into a net-positive message → ‘giving clothing new life’.

Potential challenges:

• Garments aren’t currently designed with remanufacturing (or recycling) in mind, making the process more labor-intensive… Which leads into the biggest challenge of all:

• Cost! Right now it’s easier to to just hold, dump, and / or burn textile waste. New business models & new technology are necessary to make a remanufacturing a viable alternative.

There is a lot of exploration and testing required to build viable remanufacturing capabilities for the fashion industry. But I’m excited to get creative & get my hands dirty in a venture to champion circularity & reduce textile waste.

And so to come full circle (ha) and answer the question “where do you get your materials”- there is no shortage of ‘source material’ for my re-knitting project. I know that, when I pick up an H&M sweater from my local Goodwill or a J.Crew sweater from Fabscrap, there are hundreds (if not thousands) just like it, sitting in warehouses and donation bins, ripe for remaking into new pieces. It’s more than any one person or company can take on alone - the more creative solutions we can find, the better.