What is a Circular Fashion Brand?

I tend to get asked the question- What is circular fashion? a lot. So decided to write this post so that you can understand the process AND Daines Atelier a little bit better.
The simplest way I can word it is a process with no waste and all resources and out-products can be reused or recycled. Closing the gap on being thrown away.
Also, It was one of my friends Emma Russell who introduced me to the world of circular fashion. In our weekly voice notes we would discuss what is was, why the industry needed and the impact it would have on the future.

What exactly is Circular Fashion?

It is scary to know how much wastage there is in the industry: ‘According to the EPA almost 13.1 million tons of textiles are thrown away every year. Only 15% of which (roughly 2 million tons) are recovered for reuse or recycling.

It’s gotten so bad that it’s estimated that the average American throws away 65 pounds of textiles every year and that nearly 48% of this is perfectly reusable.’ (see source 1) Although this knowledge is from 2014, the figure remains similar as we have no taken action on changing our textile wastage.

with 48% of textile wastage being perfectly reusable, why do we throw it away? Is it a psychological want to need to have new? Do we crave consumerism and spending? or do we simply not have the creative mindset to reuse the resources we have in front of us?

What do we do at Daines Atelier?

At Daines Atelier we aim to bring knowledge into that creative mindset. We source out vintage material, dead-stock material, second hand clothing and thrift-ed materials and re-purpose them. We break the mould of WHAT a material ‘should’ be used for and make it functional for every day clothing. As a result, Our process is innovative and unique, you will not see any other studio or company working a production line quite like ours.

We find it un-necessary to invest in the creation of ‘brand-new’ materials. according to a BBC insider article ‘Every three tonnes of fabric produces around 1.5 tonnes of yarn, which is woven back into what’s called “shoddy” fabric.’ (See source 2) where we have this desire for everything to be perfect materials end up being shoddy.

So, For every meter of fabric being used another half a meter has been wasted. Its scary to think really that every time you buy another item of clothing- half of it has already gone to landfill before you’ve even had the chance to wear it. The positive in this article is that this Indian community do use this shoddy material to make blankets for the communities. Also, we could maybe we could take a page from their book.

How we do zero waste.

Hence, You will notice in a lot of our garments that we keep the raw selvage details or the slightly off-cut areas from the fabric which were implemented purposely to avoid any wastage. we take pride in our actions and our small steps towards changing the outlook of the industry.

In conclusion, We are constantly altering our process and focusing on being as sustainable as we can. This post was inspired by Fashion Revolution Week. follow us on Instagram to see more posts for Fashion Revolution Week.

Sources

1. https://www.dailyinfographic.com/how-many-pounds-of-textiles-are-trashed-every-year Post by Eric Lyday (03/02/2014)
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40352910 Post by Shilpa Kannan (12/07/2017)

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