When the London-based designer Oliver Spencer hosts a cocktail party, company will usually come away not simply satiated, however with luggage of clothes containing undesirable samples or clothes that he now not wears. ‘Should you’re coming spherical to my home,’ he smiles, ‘you do greatest when you’re my dimension.’
A brand new challenge, launched in November 2023 after greater than a 12 months within the planning, operates in an analogous spirit: to increase the lifecycle of a garment and stop it from being thrown away after use. ‘Our trade makes an enormous footprint,’ Spencer says. ‘We have to get loads higher at what we’re doing. We’re accountable for the clothes we make.’
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024, greatest round method: Repurpose clothes initiative, by Oliver Spencer
British menswear model Oliver Spencer’s new sustainability initiative goals to increase the lifecycle of trend clothes by repurposing clothes in a wide range of methods
(Picture credit score: Images by Neil Godwin at Future Studios for Wallpaper*, trend by Jason Hughes)
Titled Repurpose, the challenge’s preliminary success is rooted in the best way Spencer has fostered a neighborhood since he began his menswear label in 2002 (his 4 London shops act like hubs for his devoted shopper, and he usually calls himself ‘shopkeeper’ quite than designer). Earlier clients can pop into these shops and drop off their undesirable Oliver Spencer clothes; after evaluation, these are reused, resold, upcycled or repurposed by being damaged down into their composite textiles.
In return, clients get credit score to spend in retailer, and the method may also be performed on-line. ‘Lots of people inform me they’ve had this jumper for ten years, and it’s in nice working order, and that’s unbelievable,’ says Spencer. ‘However when you don’t put on it anymore, we will discover it a brand new dwelling, or it might go and have a life elsewhere. Once we promote a garment, we’re by no means divorced from it, we stay married to it.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Oliver Spencer)
The challenge utilises Recomme, a 2023-founded, white-label clothes recycling and ‘recommerce’ platform, to do the heavy lifting. After clothes are dropped off, they’re delivered to its warehouses and assessed: these deemed unsuitable for reuse or resale are divided into streams for recycling. Single-fibre clothes, like these created from cotton and wool (as most of Spencer’s clothes are), are lowered to pulp and spun into new yarn, whereas mixed-garment fibres are delivered to numerous academic establishments to be used in inventive initiatives. Lastly, footwear is taken to a separate facility the place it’s cut up into components: rubber soles are remade into fake leather-based or recycled into coach soles, whereas different components are utilized in a large number of how, together with as cushioning fibres inside sofas. Recomme predicts the resale market – the place it’ll facilitate the sale of secondhand merchandise on-line – will surpass ‘new’ gross sales by 2025.
’Within the UK, we throw away round 300,000 tonnes of clothes a 12 months. That’s such a surprising statistic,’ says Spencer. ‘The primary factor for me is that I would like readability as to the place these clothes are going. Should you’re going to take them away from me and ship them to Atacama [the Chilean desert is one of the largest dumping grounds for discarded clothing], I’m going to be fairly livid. With Recomme, we’ve full traceability.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Oliver Spencer)
His hope for Repurpose is not only that it impacts the Oliver Spencer shopper – in spite of everything, as he says, he’s only a ‘micro menswear label’ – however that it acts as a check case to carry the idea to bigger retailers and types. ‘I’m simply saying to individuals, that is what we’re doing. However watch for us to do it a bit of bit longer and we will iron out the creases. After which we will begin getting the actually large gamers. I’d prefer to current it to them and say: I’ve bought the reply.’
His different want is to chop by way of the noise of ‘greenwashing’ campaigns by main trend manufacturers, which he believes have decreased the belief that customers have in sustainability initiatives. ‘We’re truly telling the reality,’ he says. ‘We don’t ship garbage. Individuals need high quality, they wish to know concerning the accountability of the enterprise, that you simply’re model to purchase from. I’ve spent 20 years constructing that belief.’
A model of this text seems within the February 2024 situation of Wallpaper* – devoted to the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 – out there in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple Information +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* as we speak
oliverspencer.co.uk/pages/repurpose
Supply: Wallpaper
