sustainable fashion leaders

Restyling for the war on fashion waste /  by Nina Gbor

You’ve probably heard by now that extending the life of a garment by nine extra months reduces its carbon, water and waste footprint by 20 – 30% each.

So many of us are used to buying new outfits when we have an event or whenever we’re bored with our wardrobes. Some of us just have a habit of retail therapy on autopilot. The result of this vast mindless overconsumption? A world where fashion & textiles is one of the most polluting industries in the world.

Around 100 – 150 billion garments are manufactured each year in a world of roughly 8 billion people. It’s not surprising that 87% of that ends up in landfill or incinerated each year.

The great Vivienne Westwood once said we need to buy less, choose well and make our stuff last longer. One of the easiest, simplest things anyone at any age or size can do to reduce waste in their wardrobe (and save some money in the process) is to reuse and restyle the pieces in your wardrobe, instead of buying brand new clothes.

Fluoro pink 1980s retro Japanese kimono I styled in in 6 ways.

Restyling means wearing 1 garment in multiple ways, for multiple types of occasions. It’s the antithesis to buying lots of brand new clothes or fast fashion on a regular basis. A little creativity, layering and accessorising in fun ways can be magical. New outfit combinations you never dreamed of are formed when you bring out the clothes and accessories in your wardrobe for a session of playing dress up. Mix and match different pieces that you’ve never worn together before to form new looks.

For inspiration, I’ve put 4 wardrobe restyles in this article: my pink Japanese kimono, a model I styled in a plain black dress, my white vintage 1970s taffeta dress and a bronze dress. The cool thing is that from one look to the next, you forget that it’s the same garment worn slightly differently. And each look works for a different type of occasion.

The colour, pattern and style combinations we can make in our wardrobes are endless. I hope you try it with your clothes. You can turn a dress into a top by wearing a skirt over the bottom half or even only use the bottom half as a skirt by wearing a top over the top half. This is what I did in some of these images. You can mix something that’s formal with a piece that’s more casual so that you get to wear the formal garment a little more often. The possibilities are limitless!

You can find restyle ideas and inspiration from:

  1. Insta or Tiktok style challenges

  2. by putting all your clothes and accessories on your bed, mix them up, then you’ll start to notice new pairs and combo possibilities emerge as you stare at the pile.

  3. outside perspectives. Invite a few friends over for a style party and let them restyle the pieces in your wardrobe. Take photos of each look every time you restyle so that you remember the combinations. This can be done using accessories like bags, shoes, scarves, jewellery.

The benefits of restyling? Restyling your wardrobe can make your wardrobe feel new to you because you’re wearing existing and old pieces in brand new ways. This eliminates the need to buy new clothes because you’re bored or have an event coming up. If everyone does this regularly, it’ll definitely reduce clothing waste significantly.

From a personal style perspective, it can take your wardrobe to new heights!

You can save lots of money while still looking very stylish, from NOT buying new things.

Per year, the industry contributes 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, if the fashion industry continues on its current trajectory, it could use more than 26% of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. We need to embrace simple actions like restyling. It can make a huge difference in the war on fashion waste.


♥ Nina Gbor

@eco.styles

How sustainable fashion leaders use technology to build more meaningful business /  by Nina Gbor

Fashion is the 7th biggest industry globally, currently worth $2.4 trillion. It is also the second most polluting industry in the world: creating 92 million tonnes of textile waste and 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, more than all international flights and marine shipping combined. 

With the global population expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and our overall apparel consumption forecast to increase by 63%, there is no doubt that our current trajectory has us heading towards absolute catastrophe. 

Fortunately, change is in motion. 

Over the last 18 months there has been a radical shift in the overall mindset, reimagining the way we make, buy, use and dispose our clothes. Circularity being the goal, a means to achieve climate and resource protection whilst supporting economic growth.

Here in Europe, unique collaborations between Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), International Apparel Federation (IAF) and Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) are stewarding transformative change to build a more circular economy, technology playing a pivotal part in facilitating this at scale.

I was curious to learn more about what sustainable fashion leaders back home are up to and how they are using technology to build more meaningful business. What better place to begin this conversation, than with a fellow female founder Natalie Johnson, CEO of Sustainable Fashion Marketplace, COVE.

Image: Natalie Johnson, CEO of COVE

Image: Natalie Johnson, CEO of COVE

What inspired you to move from “traditional" retail into sustainable fashion? 

I’m predominantly a fashion buyer with over 15 years’ experience in “traditional retail” but have spent a number of years working with start-ups in the fashion tech space. It was here that I was asked to be a judge at a pitch competition for fellow start-up companies in the ethical sector. One of the contestants was Gordon Renouf, Co-founder of Good on You. I was fascinated by his story and the huge traction he’d achieved. Everything he was creating aligned perfectly to my then side-hustle, COVE and I was keen to collaborate. It was actually Gordon who suggested I pivot my business model into the ethical space, which I did 18 months ago and have never looked back. When industry heavy weights like Farfetch, Yoox-Net-A-Porter and Matches Fashion are releasing “conscious” collections, and here in Australia The Iconic and David Jones have gotten behind transparency, you know it is not a trend – it’s here to stay.

 What significant differences between “traditional” and sustainable retail have you experienced?

The main difference I’ve noticed is mindset. There is a huge shift towards collaboration and community spirit in sustainable fashion. Everyone wants to share and help those around them succeed, it’s a very rewarding space to work amongst thought leaders taking risks and actually making positive impacts. The attitude of the customers in this space is also different. They’re incredibly passionate, kind and vocal. Gen Z in particular is an enormously powerful and educated sector, who wants to know the origins of items before they buy. This is making transparency a critical part of the value offering and will be price of entry for any fashion brand wanting to exist in 10 years. Another big difference with conscious shoppers is their loyalty and how they will become true brand ambassadors if they believe in your purpose. 


Can you share any particular insights around customer behaviours and how you are leveraging these to provide optimised experiences which directly impact your bottom-line?

Customers want to build trust, with where and how they shop. They realise that every time they’re opening their wallet, they’re voting for the world they want to live in. Whilst I don’t want to give away specific insights just yet, I will say our customers want to be heard. We have created a specific Facebook group for our most loyal VIP customers where we ask this community for their insights and road test some ideas before building out features. This has saved us valuable time and money and has been deeply insightful in how to map our priorities to deliver the most meaningful impact. Without our customers we are nothing, so it is important to us for them to feel involved.

Brands, like many businesses today, are more and more confronted with demands to play an active role to reduce their environmental footprint. What are some things your brand partners have adopted to get this balance right?

It’s not just about packaging however that is the biggest start. Many of our brands are switching from plastic polybags to biodegradable or compostable mail bags. We also have brands like Arnhem from Byron Bay that have incredible initiatives where they have a composting bin for their staff and even grow themfresh fruit & veg. Tigerlily are calculating and offsetting their carbon footprint, by only using sea freight vs airfreight to save tonnes on carbon emissions. There are other, simpler, considerations such as using recycled card and ribbons to tie on swing tags. From an apparel point of view it’s avoiding polyester like the plague. We want to ensure we never stock polyester garments. We can’t say with 100% confidence that a thread or label isn’t polyester, but we are working towards being polyester free and encouraging brand partners to never use it in their garments as there are enough green alternatives out there.

What tech solutions or changes have you made or are in the pipeline to reduce your environmental footprint and/or give back?

There’s little things such as the entire COVE team using Ecosia as our search engine, who plant 1 tree for every 45 web searches. They are currently up to over 60 million trees! We want to share our own contribution towards this with our community, so are in the process of developing a widget which will have a live counter of how many trees we as a company have planted and also how to offer this initiative to our customers at checkout so that together we can become carbon positive. One other element to our business model is licensing our Clo3D design software which helps brands improve efficiencies, reduce costs and lower emissions in the pre-production phase of garment sampling. Then there are bigger, more complex pieces of tech, such as building a blockchain with partners Flight Path for trusted radical transparency through brands & designers supply chains.We are also working on a new feature that will allow customers to either: buy new, rent, sell second hand or donate their product, in one convenient place. Plus at checkout, we’re partnered with i=Change; a charity platform where $1 is donated every time a transaction is made, which goes to empower young girls in underprivileged communities.

You're a passionate advocate for positive change. What is your secret to success? 

Collaboration. I cannot bring my vision to life on my own nor do I want to learn and build all the technologies required from scratch, especially when most of them exist. Instead my approach is to partner with masters within each area and work together to create a better future. We have been very strategic in our partnerships to ensure they not only align with COVE’s core values and long-term objectives but are positively changing behaviours and making a profound impact.

What shifts are you seeing brands take or not take to build a more circular economy?

Packaging is again the first visible and noticeable change. Fabric waste is starting to be minimised through the design process with tech like Gerber, which can layout your designs to optimise the fabric and eliminate/reduce waste. We’ve identified that designers do not generate revenue on the rental and second hand/donation side of the market. This could be a welcome change that tips behaviours towards building more innovative and circular models like those created by Threadtogether here in Australia or ThredUp in the USA. Moving to adapting a more circular model is slow. Not through reluctance. I think we can all agree everyone wants to be making this change, it’s through education and information. This may be because it is new, there are still many unknowns and costs associated that can make the changes seem prohibitive or restrictive. We think Anne Marie Bonneau says it best when she says “We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.” and that’s what we encourage with our partners. 

It’s an incredibly exciting time in fashion tech, a sector which remains a Pandora’s box of opportunity to explore, create and transform in ways that delivers positive impact at scale. 

As we are witnessing the world over, the future does not need to be a compromise between achieving social, economic or environmental prosperity. We can have it all if we are collaborative, conscious and harness technology to create the much-needed systemic shifts towards a circular economy. 

Written by guest blogger, Penny Whitelaw, Co-Founder of To Me Love Me. 

Insta: @2meloveme I Facebook: @2MeLoveMe I Twitter: @WhitelawPenny