Four ways to circular fashion explained — for smarter apparel investments
Whether you’re a fashion designer or consumer, you are shaping the future of a potentially sustainable fashion industry by the small decisions you make. Let me explain how.
Already in the initial design process, designers and brands, make choices that will determine the length of a garment’s lifetime, its usage and ability to be reused, upgraded, remade, or recycled. But whatever choices that are made at this stage, the lack of circularity within the fashion industry is an issue that is equally shared between the supplier — and the consumer. The supplier is responsible for and has the power to influence the issues connected to the creation of the garments; from idea, design, and production process to the final product sold to the customer. However, the customer bears the other half of the responsibility through their consumption, needs, wants, and demands. Once the garment is owned by the customer, it is up to the customer to ensure that the garment remains within a circular system, i.e. does not end up in landfill or incineration — but it is the supplier’s responsibility to make this possible.
Since the supplier creates the garment, the supplier must also ensure that the customer’s obligations can be fulfilled by designing for longevity or recyclability. If these two aspects are not considered in the design process, the customer will either not be able to make smart choices, or they will act with the belief that they contribute to circularity when they actually aren’t. For example, by recycling garments made from mixed and low-quality materials that cannot be reused, recycled, or remade. Read more about this issue here.
So by being better informed as a consumer and understanding how or if a garment’s lifetime can be extended or if its textile can be reused, you can make better choices on your own. By doing so you will also influence the suppliers’ future choices and help to shape sustainability and circularity within the fashion industry. To help you make better and more sustainable clothing investments, here are four ways to circular fashion explained.
Reuse
Applying a circular perspective on the textile industry, the reuse of clothing and textiles is the best option — so if you’re already a thrifter, keep up the game! Reuse is not only fun, creative, and circular but it’s also an effective solution because, apart from maybe repairing and cleaning the garments, not much more is needed to pass on the garments to a new wearer. However, this is only made possible if the producer made the clever decision to design and produce a garment in a timeless design and of good enough quality so that both physical, and aesthetical characteristics of the garments will last long enough to survive several wearers over a longer period of time.
Upgrade
But what if these conditions aren’t met? Don’t despair, if the garment does not directly qualify for reuse, then the next option is to upgrade the garment.
By upgrading a garment, e.g. By replacing plastic buttons with wooden buttons, the garment’s lifetime can be extended which (just like reuse) is both cost- and energy-efficient. And on top of that, in case the garment is designed in a mono-materials (i.e. the whole garment; fabric, threads, zippers, and, buttons, are made of the same material) the garment’s lifetime can be extended even further as it could be upgraded without having to compromise on the garment’s future ability to be recycled. Yet, some garments are still compound by low quality or mixed materials, and their overall quality might just not be good enough to be reused and passed on to a new wearer, or its design might simply not enable an upgrade.
Remake
If upgrading the garment is not an option, there’s still a possibility that the garment could be redone and used in new ways. This brings us to our third option, remake.
By remaking a garment into something completely different, we open up for new ways of usage and a greater variety of new designs than what is made possible when reusing or upgrading a garment. Yet, choices made in the initial design process may limit the ways the garment can be remodeled and reworked and this solution requires more thought-power, energy, and investment from the designers and the production — both in the initial design phase, but also in the subsequent “re-production”. In many cases, remake is not physically or financially possible, which leaves us with recycling as our last circular option.
Recycle
Recycling can make way for increased flexibility and new possibilities. A recycled garment compound by monomaterials can, at best, return to its initial form or be transformed into a completely new garment. But this process puts pressure on both the design process — to design a garment that can be recycled effectively, but also on the recycling process, as it is costly and requires greater investments, time, and labour. It’s also important to understand that many garments produced today, will not, nor can be recycled. For example, if the garment is made out of mixed materials, it is often cheaper to put garments into landfills than to recycle them which, unfortunately, is the strategy of many fashion businesses today.
In summary, just by knowing a little bit more about a garment’s preconditions, you can start applying a circular perspective on your clothing investments, and by doing so, help to shape a sustainable fashion industry.
Source: “Re:Textile- Feasibility of conditional design”. Feasability of conditional design — Re:Textile
