We explore the ethical and sustainable projects of four designers who, through an upcycling process, restore garments with needle, thread and… a future.
Needle, thread and future is the title of LifeGate's new video series on design. The first four episodes are dedicated to the projects of four women designers who conduct research and work primarily in the textile field.
Ecosocial designer Iryna Kucher is seeking to preserve particular mending techniques and the tools needed to apply them through the project mend.it. Denise Bonapace, an established designer and artist, investigates the relationship between body and garment and is the founder of Abitario, a collective that designs and produces knitwear collections made up of one-of-a-kind pieces starting from salvaged garments.
Seçil Uğur Yavuz, a designer and researcher at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, is conducting research that draws on the ancient textile tradition of her home country, Turkey, of passing down precious family embroidered textiles to brides, in order to explore new creative possibilities. Adele Buffa, a designer from Turin, studying for a master's degree in Ecosocial Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, recounts the Mnemosine workshop on textile upcycling, aimed at raising awareness about how to make the most of what we already have from a sustainable, zero-waste perspective.
The work of all four designers falls within the realm of upcycling, the increasingly widespread practice of giving new life to an object by elevating it to a higher level, adding value that goes beyond the mere act of recycling. This is where creativity comes into play — the ability to generate that added value from the virtuous act of recycling, transforming what already exists into something else, something more beautiful and of greater worth.
Upcycling in the field of fashion — from eco-sustainable designer Stella McCartney, who has long embraced the practice, to John Galliano for the brand Martin Margiela, or Dolce&Gabbana, who have come to it more recently — exploded as a phenomenon during last year's global lockdown, taking on a dual value: ethical and aesthetic.
And the reuse and reworking of fabrics or garments from past collections into new ones has steadily gained ground, converting already-worn or discarded products and waste raw materials into something better. It therefore represents an evolution of the concept of "vintage", introducing a creative transformation that not only extends the life of a garment but reinvents it entirely into something new and unique.
"Working on upcycling," wrote journalist Gianluca Bauzano in the Corriere della Sera, "means pressing down on the accelerator of that circular economy that everyone has their eye on. Producing to last — the new mantra. The frenetic pace of fast fashion, much like the theory of luxury capsule collections, has seen a gradual downshifting. Beyond mere recycling. Creative reuse lies in turning what has been discarded or already worn into something new."
Andrea Rosso, for his project Diesel upcycling for 55dsl presented in Milan in February 2020 during fashion week, spoke of "concrete sustainability" and uses the labels on each garment to tell the story of its origins and transformation into a new life.
In essence, all the initiatives put forward by the clothing production sector share the common goal of putting a stop to the dumping of tonnes of garments in landfill year after year, as described in the book La rivoluzione comincia dall'armadio. Tutto quello che dovreste sapere sulla moda sostenibile by Luisa Ciuni and Marina Spadafora. And of raising individual and collective awareness in support of more ethical and sustainable lifestyle choices.
An ecosocial designer of Ukrainian origin, Iryna Kucher is the creator of the project mend.it, a system based on the principles of the circular economy in the field of fashion and textiles. It takes the form of a kit comprising 3D-printable mending tools using dual extrusion, along with a set of aesthetic mending parameters. This system enables the reintroduction and learning of various techniques.
"Because," says Iryna in the video, "we need to learn to take care of what we have in our wardrobe! There are many people rediscovering the pleasure of repairing rather than throwing things away, and our eyes are growing accustomed to seeing the beauty in imperfections."
This research project explores how design can intervene to overcome the main barriers to mending practices: a lack of skills, time and equipment. It also investigates how these design approaches can guide, support and inspire different levels of engagement with mending practices, while simultaneously building the individual and collective capacity of people to take care of the clothes they already own. So what is the difference between a standard sewing or embroidery kit and mend.it?
The Abitario project places the concept of recovery at its centre, through a research process that applies traditional techniques in an experimental way to transform them into poetic, one-of-a-kind personalised garments. All projects are rooted in sustainability and ethics, from design through to production, as Denise writes in the Abitario manifesto.
From its very first collection of used knitwear — each piece with its own past and its own personality — the garments produced by the Abitario collective propose a new relationship between body and clothing, between invention and realisation: through inclusive design. The garments carry no label, but a genuine passport, which provides information on provenance, production process and project, while also leaving space for future notes.
Blanca is Abitario's most recent project, a collection of gloves produced as pairs of unique pieces, which recovers a small quantity of gloves left over as production surplus. In this project too, sustainability is central, and by working with deadstock it transforms it, through embroidery, into a true upcycling intervention — a unique, limited-edition accessories collection.
"The word 'embroidery', whose root derives from the Arabic term raqm — says Denise Bonapace — means 'sign': the gloves are in fact collections of signs that life, chance and intention leave on the knit, like a map ready to be deciphered, read and lived."
Çeyizlab is a research project conducted by Seçil Uğur Yavuz and Hazal Gümüş Çiftçi that addresses an ancient and still widely practised Turkish tradition: the inheritance of handmade textiles passed down from the women of a family to the bride. Due to social, economic and technological changes, this age-old tradition has long been undergoing a process of transformation.
Looking to the past and thinking towards the future, the designers asked themselves how to envision a sustainable future that preserves this tradition while giving it a new, more contemporary identity. "After conducting many online interviews with Turkish women — says Seçil — the idea emerged of a manifesto that was embroidered onto a fabric and that reflects the stories, memories and desires of the women we interviewed."