Why Upcycling Is Suddenly Everywhere in Fashion

**Sheena Butler-Young** (0:08)
Hello, and welcome to The Debrief from The Business of Fashion where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm Senior Correspondent Sheena Butler-Young.
For a long time, upcycling sat on the edges of the fashion industry. It was associated with small independent designers, niche sustainability labels, and one-off capsule collections designed to make a statement, or even just a hobbyist pursuit. But change is in the air. At Paris Couture Week this spring, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier closed the season with a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands. Coach is turning used denim into new bags, and even high street retailer Uniqlo is experimenting with re-making unsellable and used garments through its label RE. Increasingly, upcycling is being sold through creativity, individuality, and provenance, not just a sustainability hook.
So today we're asking why upcycling is suddenly everywhere? What is making waste more attractive as a raw material, and whether this can become a real part of fashion supply chain? Joining me is BOF sustainability reporter Shayeza Walid, who's been following the change. Shayeza, welcome back to the debrief.

**Shayeza Walid** (1:23)
Thanks so much for having me, Sheena. Excited to talk about this one.

**Sheena Butler-Young** (1:27)
So for the listeners who may use this word loosely, including myself, how would you define upcycling?

**Shayeza Walid** (1:34)
So typically upcycling involves taking used or unsold clothes and then reworking it into a new product by elevating it. So in real terms, that could mean breaking down a jacket or cutting it up and re-sewing it and make it into a mini skirt or taking a pair of jeans and making it into a jacket by chopping it up and re-sewing it. And historically, it's maybe done with a needle and thread, but increasingly, it's done with machinery or other creative means where people are finding ways to reconstruct garments from old clothes or unsold clothes.

**Sheena Butler-Young** (2:05)
So it's interesting because I obviously don't cover sustainability, but I followed it for a long time. I remember the initial conversations from brands. It was all about creating something new. Like one of my first interviews about sustainability, maybe close to a decade ago, the brand was talking about opening an entire facility to make all this new stuff that was going to be labeled sustainability or sustainable. Then over the years, you watched different iterations of that. I think somewhere around maybe five years ago, the conversation really shifted towards reuse, re-commerce, taking what already exists in the supply chain and making better use of it instead of making something entirely new.
What's changed now? Why is upcycling a big deal now? That's the newest iteration of this. What made you want to write about it this month?

**Shayeza Walid** (2:55)
Throughout the whole year, really, there's been a rise in collaborations from these smaller niche independent brands that have upcycled or known for their upcycling methods such as ELV. Denim, which takes jeans that already exist or waste jeans from recycling units and reforms into these beautiful high street pieces. They have this division into where the two jeans are brought together. But Connor Eaves, Alu Wallia, Marine Serre, so many brands like this, I noticed increasingly we're collaborating with these bigger industry players from your Nikes to Patagonia working with a smaller label too.
It just felt like the term was becoming ubiquitous across marketing and it felt like historically, to your point, this idea of upcycling meant something that independent sustainable brands did or was very niche or like something that a certain type of consumer was drawn to making new of what already exists or is old. But it felt like it was being claimed by a certain segment of the industry. And there was a promise in that. I want to say we've seen this recalibration and how sustainability is marketed for a while in the last two years. But the term being used in this way meant that it was no longer relegated into something that was for a certain type of consumer or for just left for a certain type of brand to do. And so that's why I felt like it was time to do the story because it felt like not only was it coming up everywhere from this new Miu Miu collection that they dropped in the summer.
You know, they've actually been doing upcycled collections since 2020 But this summer, you know, they use Suki Waterhouse as a pretty known face and they moved away from their vintage dresses to like denim and leather. So it's a growing collection. So it felt like it was just on this uptick. And I felt like it was the right time to be able to double down on it as we see these broader shifts in sustainability.