Picture your wardrobe. How much of it do you actually wear? A 2021 report from Levi’s found that Australians only wear 50 per cent of their wardrobe regularly. Of that remaining 45 per cent, how many pieces would you wear if only something were different – jeans that you would wear if only they were slightly bigger, or a dress that would be perfect if only it didn’t have that ripped seam.
This is exactly what Australian fashion label Romance Was Born did last month in a week-long pop-up in Sydney’s East. In partnership with Electrolux, the brand’s creative duo Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett invited people to bring in an item of clothing to be repaired or revived, free of charge.
Romance Was Born’s Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett recently hosted a pop-up event helping people upcycle their pre-loved clothing.
The pop-up, titled Break the Cycle, was “received enthusiastically”, says Romance Was Born co-founder Luke Sales. While the event was fully booked, they managed to squeeze in a few walk-ins too. When I visited Sales and Plunkett, the shop had only been open for a few hours but was already attracting curious passers-by. “Everyone has something they want reimagined,” says Sales of the event’s success. “People are always holding on to things they wish could be fixed.”
Pre-loved garments brought in ran the gamut from old jeans to a wedding dress. Some were sentimental, says Sales, pointing out a man who had brought in his young daughter’s favourite outfit that her mum had accidentally bleached. Other requests were more practical – one girl walked in wearing her favourite coat, and asked for it to be cropped to take some weight off it.
Sales says sustainability and waste reduction have always been part of Romance Was Born’s mission. Ensuring their beautiful garments aren’t just “one wear” pieces is part of this. “When we make a wedding dress, the client is able to return it and we can make it into something more wearable.”
“Upcycling is something we try to drop into each collection,” Sales says. “We know the demand is there.” Current offerings on their website include a collaboration with experimental workroom Future From Waste Lab, that dyed and upcycled men’s business shirts and bedsheets.
Costumes for The Sydney Opera House’s upcoming production of Amadeus, will also include recycled materials.
Sales emphasises that despite these efforts, they’re only a small part of a bigger picture. “We’re a really small company, so we’re just doing it in a way we can. Each thing has to be cut individually, it’s a slow process.”
Customer requests at the Break the Cycle event ranged from the sentimental to the practical.
Customer education is another hurdle that needs to be overcome when it comes to sustainability. With upcycled fashion, it’s about “understanding that not everything will be perfect, colours may vary, things might have a small hole.”
Nique’s recycling program takes pieces that would otherwise go to landfill and reimagines them.
“Just because something is made out of an old blanket [a recent project saw the brand repurpose old blankets into bags and jackets], it’s not going to be cheaper. It’s probably the opposite of that actually. Some people are really into that and just get it, while others have a hard time understanding the concept.”
Sydney-based label Nique, has a strong sustainability ethos. “Our strategy is to leave a light footprint on the earth. We’re not going to greenwash people, but we’re responsible,” says creative director Nadia Jones.
Their circularity program launched two years ago, with the aim of producing as little waste as possible. ReNique ReNew, one such project, takes clothing samples as well as damaged stock from the shop floor and upcycles them in an “elevated, avant-garde way”. Customers are also able to return their pre-loved Nique items in exchange for store credit.
“The plan was to upcycle [a garment], not to devalue it. We wanted to take something and make it even better,” says Jones.
Nique collaborates with not-for-profit Second Stitch, as well as small brands Citizen Wolf, SZN, and Gliese (504) to help facilitate their recycling initiative.
Anthony Chesler is the CEO of Thread Together, an Australian charity that collects clothing waste from fashion labels and redistributes it to people in need. Since it was founded in 2012, Chesler says the fashion industry has become “increasingly more conscious about ethical solutions to waste.” There’s been a shift in behaviour,” he continues, “although whether that volume has decreased is questionable, as there’s still a lot of production” (the charity receives about 100,000 units of clothing each month that is then sorted and distributed).
According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water, Australians are the second-highest consumers of textiles per person in the world. Annually, each Australian acquires an average of 27 kilograms of clothing per year, and will send 23 kilograms to landfill.
Still, Chesler is hopeful. Indeed, Thread Together’s success is a sign that Australian brands are increasingly trying to do the right thing. Almost all the traffic [to their website] is organic, he says, and everyday they are inundated with requests from brands to partner with them.
The goal is to “keep the garment at the highest value for the longest time,” and find scalable solutions that they can then take to the industry as a model of what can be done.
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