Reshaping Fashion
Exploring sustainability and up-cycling in fashion and design.
Written by Craig Berry
Designer & Writer
A recent ‘trend’ in the fashion industry is big brands exploring sustainability in their product design and acknowledging and accepting responsibility for their carbon footprint. For a long time, the fashion industry has ranked high as one of the most polluting industries; in 2019, it was reportedly the third biggest manufacturing industry, behind automotive and technology.
Fashion and textile production contributes more to climate change than international aviation and shipping, combined¹, responsible for 8% of carbon emissions globally².
It’s not just the fashion industry’s producers that are the problem, though; consumers also have a responsibility as more than $500 billion of value is lost every year due to clothing underutilisation and lack of recycling³. People either aren’t wearing the clothes they buy (at least not enough) or aren’t recycling them when they are finished with them.
Fast fashion is one of the biggest culprits, with brands jumping on trends and making cheap and affordable clothing that isn’t designed to last. Both physically (low-quality materials) and socially (no longer popular), with one in three young women (the largest segment of consumers) considering garments worn once or twice to be old.⁴
¹ House of Common Environmental Audit Committee 2019. ² UN Environment 2019. ³ Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017. ⁴ The Guardian 2019.
As with other industries, one brand can’t change the system overnight, but brands in high regard can influence other brands and create a group effort. Take Tesla, for example, electric cars existed before Tesla started in 2003, but they weren’t necessarily cool. But Tesla’s car models; a combination of cool (thanks to the design by Franz von Holzhausen)t and electric-powered, influenced traditional petrol car companies like Porsche and Mercedes to either create or update their electric car designs to be just as cool; either as a way to keep up with Tesla and modern consumer’s desire for electric cars or also to address their own environmental responsibility.
To come back to fashion, though, it takes popular brands like Nike and Adidas and fast fashion brands like H&M and Zara to make the proper steps towards sustainability and show the rest of the industry that it can be done. And done in a way that can appeal to consumers and hopefully change the system. Over the past few years, though, they have, both on a business level by perhaps using renewable energy in their factories and on a consumer level by creating widely available products made from recycled or recyclable materials. I wanted to explore some of these.
Nike – Space Hippie Series
Nike has a sustainability program called Move to Zero, which is their “journey towards zero carbon and zero waste to protect the future of sport”, which encompasses their use of sustainable materials, innovation and circular design. In February 2020, they showcased their Space Hippie collection, a series of experimental shoes made from scrap materials taken from their factory floors (“space junk”) and other recycled materials (plastic bottles etc.), with each pair having 3.7 kg of carbon (compared to an average pair having 25kg⁵).
The Space Hippie collection is one of the first mass-produced designs from Nike, which is the first step towards a circular economy to eliminate waste and pollution:
“We believe the future for product will be circular. We must think about the entire process: how we design it, how we make it, how we use it, how we reuse it and how we cut out waste at every step. These are the fundamentals of a circular mindset that inform best practices.”
Seana Hannah, VP of Sustainable Innovation at Nike.
On a design basis, they’ve taken the idea of Space and ran with it. Inspired by the planet Mars and with the idea that “there is no resupply mission on Mars (or Earth)” where materials are scarce, and things are made from scraps, or “space junk”, thus the futuristic, space-inspired design. The graphic design, done by Nemanja Jehlicka, echoes this wild and futuristic design with crazy typography on the shoe and packaging. Nike even went as far as to consider the box design, swapping the usual double box for delivery to a single shoebox made from re-purposed material and printed on with plant-based ink.
“There’s this idea in space exploration that if you’re going to fly to the moon or fly to Mars and stay there and do something, you have to create things with what you find there. They say there’s no resupply mission coming to Mars–there’s no resupply mission coming to earth either.”
Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, designer at Nike.
Despite being a bit of a promotional piece to create hype, Nike has started to implement these recycled materials, made from off-cuts and factory leftovers, into their wider product range and adding more designs to the Space Hippie collection.
Adidas Originals x Sean Wotherspoon – SUPEREARTH
Over the past few years, Adidas has had several sustainable shoe collections and designs. One of the more-known collaborations with Parley for the Oceans was creating shoes made from plastic fishing nets extracted from oceans. They have also incorporated many recycled and sustainable materials into their general product ranges, in 2021 pledging that 60% of all of its products will be made this way.
Adidas (Originals) has also been experimenting with plant-based, vegan leather in their shoe designs by creating a synthetic leather-like material from recycled polyester, and, much like Nike’s Space Hippie, they used a wild design to showcase it: the SUPEREARTH, in collaboration with Sean Wotherspoon.
Known for his devotion to veganism, together with Adidas, Wotherspoon reimagined the iconic Adidas Superstar shoe, with each facet being re-considered and 100% vegan. Besides the obvious use of leather and suede, shoes made from canvas, for instance, can still have animal-derived materials such as glue.
“People know that I’m vegan, and it’s a foundation of who I am. It’s a cornerstone of all my projects and part of sustainable living. Adidas loved it, and we started to look at all the ways we can bring vegan materials to the Superstar.”
Sean Wotherspoon.
Going further, traditional plastic elements of the shoe have been swapped with natural materials, cork and OrthLite for the insole, recycled paper for the laces, and a rubber sole made using 10% waste rubber content and 90% sustainably sourced natural rubber.
The design by Wotherspoon highlights the shoe’s dedication to the environment as well as his own personal eclectic and lively style, taking the iconic shoe design and covering it in floral sketches and loose, flowing embroidered threads all over. In a way similar to Nike, it has its own hippy vibe. Recently, new shoe model designs have been shared, following the same design ethos and style.
Greater Goods
Sometimes though, when brands aren’t doing what you feel that they should be doing, in terms of sustainability, you have to do it yourself. I was initially inspired to write this piece by the work of the Greater Goods, a brand that focuses on upcycling by turning old, damaged and out-of-warranty outdoor clothing pieces into functional outdoor accessories aka turning “nothing into something”.
Founded by designer Jaimus Tailor, and based in London, Greater Goods have several regular products which give a new life to these previously un-usable pieces and a nice-looking new life at that; an aesthetics-driven approach in a similar way to the well known and more commercial luggage brand, Freitag.
The products made by Greater Goods are not just a fixed version of whatever the material came from, but something different that still has the trademark (quite literally) features. Tote bags and bottle bags are the main products they create and sell which came from Tailor’s own want and need, each time the design adjusting and adapting to the material it’s made from:
“It’s more design than art. I never go in with a plan of “this bag is going to look like this.” A lot of these jackets are so complex. Their shape dictates the final outcome. It’s like woodwork — the scrap piece of wood dictates what the final piece can be. Shape and colour are all decided beforehand; you just have to adapt and work around it.”
Jaimus Tailor
Whether inspired by this, or on their own accord, the brands whose materials are used in Greater Goods’ products also have upcycling themed projects. In 2018 The North Face partnered with The Renewal Workshop to launch its Renewedcollection, where they work with defective or returned garments, repair them to a nearly-new state and sell them at a discount. Patagonia did something similar a year earlier with their Worn Wear collection, where they encouraged consumers to trade, sell and buy second-hand Patagonia products, repairing where necessary.
In 2020 The North Face then used The Renewal Workshop and launched its Remade Collection for Earth Day, a collection of unique, one-of-a-kind upcycled garments made using returned, damaged and defective pieces, creating some interesting patchwork pieces. And Arc’teryx even collaborated with Greater Goods to create a collection to support the outdoors foundation Flock Together, where Arc’teryx supplied a number of out-of-warranty jackets for Greater Goods to create new jackets and signature Greater Goods products.
The fact that a relatively small brand like Greater Goods caught the attention of a big brand like Arc’teryx shows that these grassroots projects can easily influence how big brands work and how they want to move forwards into a more sustainable future. Likewise, big brands like Nike and Adidas can influence other big brands to either keep up or follow the path towards a higher focus on sustainability.
Read more blog posts on craig-berry.co.uk or my Medium page.
