For a lot of people, the idea of wanting to make sustainable fashion choices may have just sunk in, and now they are already hearing about the 'next' thing; Circular fashion choices. Confusing? Demotivating?
In this post, we'll try to explain why it shouldn't be anything other than hopeful and inspiring. The way we see it, circularity is the next, very important, step forward to a sustainable fashion future.
Circular fashion choices are basically next level sustainable fashion choices. In short; Sustainability focuses on the use of materials that are not harmful for the environment. Circular fashion is made from what is already there and then keeping these materials in a circular textile loop (so no new waste will be created either). Circularity is focused on solving fashion waste issues which resulted from the lineair take & make system.
This is much needed because we all know by now the enormous pressure fashion waste is putting on our planet and the people who live in places this landfill ends up. Every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truckload of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill.
Let's take a deep dive, with a little case study of one of the circular items in our collection; the Bobby jumper.
To make this gorgeous raspberry red knitted jumper we collaborated with local circular fashion pioneer Loop.a.Life.This company managed to create a stream to work with the garments, which are thrown away in textile bins, in North Holland. These worn and discarded garments are collected, sorted, and then mechanically recycled into new high-quality yarns.
We fell in love with their beautiful 70% post-consumer recycled cotton/ 30% Tencel yarn. So yes, for the yarn of this jumper 30% Tencel was added for strength and softness. In theory, this is a newly made sustainable fabric, not circular. At this moment we still felt this was a great option. The fashion industry is one of the major contributors to plastic microfibres entering our oceans. Therefore we only want to work with natural fibers. Tencel is natural, recyclable, and biodegradable. And we did understand from Loop.a.Life that in the meantime they also manage to make 100% recycled yarns of high quality, so coming up next ;)
If we are very honest this first zero waste jumper also has zero margins for us as a company. This means that to develop this stream of our collection further investments and new developments in the industry are needed but you have to start somewhere right? And we truly believe that people proudly wearing this jumper because it's pretty and because they like to share the circular story behind it can result in a snowball effect - where more people get inspired to choose circular and join to close the loop together.
One more very important thing about circular fashion we would like to add. Future-proof fashion development can never exist without respect for craftsmanship. We do see more and more sustainability and circularity claims but are often missing information about where, by whom, and under which conditions, these garments are made (too cheap to be true but also no information = alarm bells!). We believe a garment can not be sustainable or circular when it isn't produced in a fair manner. So choose circular fashion that is made by people earning a fair living wage in a safe and respectful work environment.