{"id":21,"date":"2026-08-18T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2026\/?p=21"},"modified":"2026-09-09T21:37:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:37:50","slug":"drowning-in-clothes-how-textile-waste-is-driving-a-craft-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2026\/drowning-in-clothes-how-textile-waste-is-driving-a-craft-revival\/","title":{"rendered":"Drowning in Clothes: How Textile Waste Is Driving a Craft Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

As fashion waste accelerates, textile makers in New York and beyond reclaim craft, history, and care as alternatives to disposable clothing\u2013 and even capitalism itself.<\/p>\n

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Looms at the Textile Arts Center, a community studio where people can learn different fiber techniques including loom weaving. Image by Dorothy Bailey<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How many pieces of clothing do you own that you never wear? They sit in closets and drawers, folded into uneven stacks or hung in tight rows\u2013 shirts that no longer fit quite right, jeans you once meant to patch, dresses tied to a version of yourself you\u2019ve outgrown. Some are nearly new, still holding the shine of a recent purchase. Others show wear: a stretched collar, a missing button, fabric thinning at the elbows. None feel fully disposable, yet they don\u2019t feel worth the effort to repair.<\/p>\n

Instead, they linger in a kind of in-between state. Not worn, not discarded, just there. You reach past them every morning, maybe with a flicker of guilt, before closing the closet door and letting them fade out of mind. A shirt you haven\u2019t worn in months becomes years. A pair of pants that just needs a button slips further out of rotation. The question shifts from what to wear to what to do with everything else.<\/p>\n

Throwing clothing away rarely feels straightforward. Some pieces carry memory\u2013 the dress from graduation, the sweater that still feels like a hug. Others seem salvageable, if only you had the time. So the clothes stay. Or eventually they go\u2013 dropped into a donation bin, stuffed into a trash bag, handed off with the vague promise of reuse. Once they leave your hands, their fate becomes abstract, disappearing into a system most people never see.<\/p>\n

According to the 2015 documentary\u00a0The True Cost<\/em><\/a>, the average American throws away about 82 pounds of textiles each year. Multiplied across millions of households, that becomes a steady, largely invisible stream of waste moving in and out of closets just like yours.<\/p>\n

The cost extends far beyond what ends up in landfills. The fashion industry is responsible for roughly\u00a0eight to ten percent of global carbon emissions<\/a>\u2013 more than international flights and shipping combined\u2013 and generates around\u00a092 million tons<\/a>\u00a0of textile waste each year. That\u2019s the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothing being burned or landfilled every second.<\/p>\n

Beyond carbon, textile waste also releases methane, a greenhouse gas that has a more immediate warming effect, further accelerating climate change. Each garment also carries the cost of resource use. It can take about\u00a02,700 liters of water<\/a>\u00a0to make a single cotton shirt and up to\u00a07,500 liters<\/a>\u00a0for a pair of jeans.<\/p>\n

Across the United States, textile waste has become a massive and growing problem. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans generated roughly 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018,\u00a0with only about 15 percent recycled or reused.\u00a0<\/a>The rest was landfilled or incinerated, contributing to long-term environmental damage.<\/p>\n

From inside a bedroom closet, the scale of this system is almost impossible to grasp. There are no immediate consequences of holding onto too much or letting things go. But in places where discarded clothing ends up, the system becomes more tangible.<\/p>\n

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Bags of fabric waiting to be sorted at FABSCRAP, a non profit textile recycling center. Image by Dorothy Bailey<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hidden inside the maze-like corridors of the Brooklyn Army Terminal, volunteers sit shoulder-to-shoulder around folding tables, pulling material from bulging black trash bags and sorting it into piles. The air is dense with tiny fibers and the faint chemical smell of synthetic blends. A low, constant rustle fills the room as sequined swatches, denim scraps, spandex offcuts, and bolts of unused yardage pass through their hands in a steady rhythm: pick up, assess, place. Keep. Reuse. Trash. There is little time to linger on any single piece.<\/p>\n

One Saturday afternoon, I took a place at one of the tables to help sort. I reached into a bag and pulled out a swatch book of beautifully patterned fabrics. It didn\u2019t look like waste. None of it did, at least not in the way I expected it to. But the pace of the room made the decision for me. A volunteer next to me gestured toward a bin, and I dropped it in, already reaching for the next piece.<\/p>\n

This is a typical day at FABSCRAP, a nonprofit that handles textile waste generated by New York\u2019s fashion industry. What stands out most is not any single item, but the sheer, disorienting volume of what passes through the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe receive about 7,000 pounds a week from 20 to 25 different brands,\u201d said service coordinator Jo Corvus, who has spent years watching the flow of material move through the warehouse. \u201cAcross the year, that\u2019s closer to 250,000 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing at the folding table you can feel the magnitude of those numbers: in the constant thud of new bags hitting the floor, in the dumpster of sorted material waiting to be baled, and in the towering mountain of unopened bags looming in the background\u2013 some of them waiting months or even years to be processed.<\/p>\n

For warehouse manager Candelle Monteagudo, that constant movement is the point. Her days begin early, walking the floor to see what arrived overnight and what needs to move before the next shift begins. \u201cEvery decision here is about movement,\u201d she said. \u201cIf something stalls, it takes up space we don\u2019t have. You\u2019re always thinking about where it can go next.\u201d<\/p>\n

After sorting, the material is compressed into dense bales, each weighing between 380 and 425 pounds, and shipped out to be shredded into insulation, carpet padding, or industrial fibers. Other pieces are resold through FABSCRAP\u2019s reuse store, extending their life in smaller ways.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t just where clothing goes. It\u2019s how much of it there is. Even when items are carefully sorted, resold, or recycled, the system is still overwhelmed by volume. More keeps coming than can ever be meaningfully reused.<\/p>\n

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Volunteers sorting fabric scraps at FABSCRAP. Image by Dorothy Bailey<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This imbalance, between how much we produce and how much can be absorbed, has prompted a renewed interest in older ways of making and maintaining clothing. Periods of rapid industrial expansion and mass consumption have often been met with a return to the handmade, not just as aesthetic but as a way of reasserting control and connection in the face of large scale production. What\u2019s less clear is whether this moment represents a meaningful shift or simply another response that exists alongside the system it resists.<\/p>\n

Today, this pattern is appearing against the backdrop of fast fashion and its environmental consequences. As clothing is produced, consumed, and discarded at unprecedented speeds, making and mending are being rediscovered, not only as hobbies but as forms of resistance, community building, and alternative ways of valuing what we own. Simultaneously, these practices risk being absorbed, commercialized, and reshaped into another form of consumption.<\/p>\n

After clothing leaves the closet, it doesn\u2019t disappear. It moves through a system built to handle more than it can hold. At the same time, some people are choosing to slow that movement down and reconsidering what it means to keep something in use. Elsewhere, in places where craft remains part of daily life, a different model already exists.<\/p>\n

Taken together, these threads ask what making and mending can actually shift, where their limits lie, and whether they can persist without being absorbed into the systems they resist.<\/p>\n

\u2726\u2726\u2726<\/p>\n

Craft Across Past Movements<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the late nineteenth century, the first Arts and Crafts movement emerged in response to the rapid industrialization. As factories increased output and standardized production, products became more accessible, but often at the cost of quality and craftsmanship. For critics of industrial production, the issue was not just aesthetic, but moral. Factory labor broke making into parts, separating workers from the objects they produced and reducing skilled work into repetitive tasks.<\/p>\n

In response, thinkers like John Ruskin and William Morris argued for a return to handwork, durability, and a closer relationship between maker and object. The philosophy argued that making wasn\u2019t just about the final product but was a way to restore meaning to the process.<\/p>\n

But even at its inception, that vision contained contradictions. Morris\u2019s handcrafted goods were often too expensive for the working-class people his philosophy idealized, revealing a tension that continues to shape craft movements today: the desire for ethical production within systems that make it nearly impossible to sustain.<\/p>\n

Textiles sit at the center of this history, in part because industrialization transformed them so dramatically. As lace historian Elena Kalangy-Loux explained, within a matter of decades, cloth shifted from being a scarce resource to one of abundance. \u201cTextiles went from something that was an extreme luxury only available to the wealthy into something that was immediately accessible to most people,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the price of that was exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before mechanization, textile work could offer relative stability. Kalangy-Loux explains that in many parts of Europe, lacemakers earned wages that were better than other forms of labor such as agricultural work. \u201cThese were really cushy jobs for working class women and girls at the time\u201d she said, complicating the common narrative of women\u2019s unrelenting hardship. Industrialization did not invent exploitation, but it reorganized it, scaling production in ways that rapidly devalued handwork.<\/p>\n

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Clothing and textiles from the Arts and Crafts Movement at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Image by Dorothy Bailey<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similar tensions resurfaced nearly a century later. The 1960s and 1970s saw a full-scale revival of craft shaped by both economic pressure and cultural resistance. As clothing became more expensive and mass production expanded, many people began making their own garments out of necessity, while handmade aesthetics like embroidery, visible mending, and embellished denim became part of a broader rejection of mass-produced uniformity.<\/p>\n

Separately, fiber arts were being redefined in the art world. According to Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of Arts and Design the late 1960s marked a turning point in how textile practices were understood. For much of the early twentieth century, weaving, knitting, and embroidery had been dismissed as domestic or decorative.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened in the late \u201960s,\u201d Auther said, \u201cis that artists, many of them women, began to reclaim those materials and techniques and bring them into contemporary art spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Work by artists like Judy Chicago and Sheila Hicks helped reposition textile practices as both artistic and political, drawing attention to forms of labor that had been long overlooked. Exhibitions such as\u00a0Wall Hangings<\/em>\u00a0at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969 helped legitimize fiber-based work within modernist institutions, even as artists simultaneously challenged the hierarchies those institutions upheld.<\/p>\n

This shift also intersected with the broader counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when rejection of mass production and industrial systems began to shape everyday practices. As Auther explained, fiber arts became especially central to this moment because of their accessibility. \u201cFiber arts are inherently accessible\u2013 you don\u2019t need expensive equipment, and they can be learned outside formal institutions\u2013 so they become a natural vehicle for this kind of self-sufficiency,\u201d Auther said.<\/p>\n

Publications like the\u00a0Whole Earth Catalog<\/em>\u00a0reinforced this ethos, promoting the idea that people could make, repair, and sustain their own material lives. Knitting, weaving, and sewing were no longer just hobbies, but part of a broader ideological shift toward autonomy and resistance to capitalist production systems, where goods are produced quickly and cheaply through mass manufacturing and disposable consumption. Choosing to make one\u2019s own clothing or textiles became, in many cases, a rejection of disposable culture and industrial labor practices, instead emphasizing care and durability in opposition to speed and anonymity.<\/p>\n

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Magazine article from 1967 showing how to make a DIY bottle tab vest. Image from\u00a0Real Clothes Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore\u00a0<\/em>By Kiki Smith<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe recuperation of fiber arts in the 1970s sits at the intersection of feminism, DIY culture, and anti-capitalist critique,\u201d said Auther. \u201cIt\u2019s about reclaiming undervalued labor, but also about rethinking how and why we make things in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet this revival, too, was incomplete. Certain practices, particularly those coded as overly feminine, like lace, remained marginalized. \u201cYou\u2019ll never find huge names in the lace world in these histories of fiber arts,\u201d said Kalangy-Loux. \u201cLace was \u2018too girly.\u2019\u201d Even as fiber arts entered the realm of fine art, longstanding hierarchies persisted, shaping which techniques were valued and which were dismissed.<\/p>\n

These cycles extend even further back. Textile traditions have repeatedly moved in and out of fashion, falling out of use and being revived in new contexts. \u201cIt just happens over and over again, as far back as cloth-making exists,\u201d said Kalangy-Loux.<\/p>\n

What links these moments is not just a return to handwork, but the conditions that produce it. Periods of rapid technological change, whether industrialization, or today\u2019s fast-moving clothing system, often renew interest in slowness and control. \u201cIt\u2019s the exact same conversations that are happening right now,\u201d Kalangy-Loux said, pointing to today\u2019s backlash against automation and AI.<\/p>\n

In response, making and mending have returned once again, this time shaped by environmental anxiety, digital saturation, and increasingly precarious labor conditions. For some, craft offers a way to reclaim time in the face of constant productivity demands. For others, it functions as a form of coping with burnout, or as a more mindful and personal way of engaging with material goods.<\/p>\n

Textiles, in particular, seem to drive this shift because of their proximity to the body. Cloth is both practical and deeply personal, explained Jordana Martin, founder of Tatter Blue Library, a textile library dedicated to the study and collection of textile books and objects. \u201cIt\u2019s such a responsive medium,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re making textiles all the time to respond to environments, to augment our comfort, to prepare us to survive different conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

That responsiveness extends beyond function into social life as well. Textile-making, she noted, has long been rooted in collective practices\u2013 quilting, weaving, sewing in shared spaces\u2013 and tends to re-emerge in moments of stress. \u201cIn political times that are more stressful\u2026 you get people comforting themselves\u2026 by using their hands, and making cloth, and communing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, these communities take different forms. In mending circles and workshops, people sit side by side, passing garments and demonstrating stitches, while online platforms link dispersed makers into loose networks around repair and making. These practices don\u2019t replace the larger clothing economy, but they offer ways of stepping outside of it.<\/p>\n

These histories point to a recurring pattern, showing how moments of rapid production generate their own forms of resistance, while also revealing recurring pitfalls. Craft movements have repeatedly struggled with questions of access, labor, and scale, asking who can afford to participate, whose work is valued, and how to avoid commercialization.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening today now follows the same pattern. When systems of production accelerate beyond what feels manageable, some people begin looking for ways to slow them down. As Kalangy- Loux put it: \u201cAs soon as something goes to one extreme, the other inevitably pops up as well.\u201d It\u2019s unclear whether these small acts of making and mending can grow into something bigger, or whether they will just be absorbed back into the same systems they challenge.<\/p>\n

\u2726\u2726\u2726<\/p>\n

Mending Against Fast Fashion<\/strong><\/p>\n

I struggled to find a seat when I arrived at the Darn It! Mending Club at the Textile Arts Center. Even though it wasn\u2019t my first time, I was still surprised by how full the room was. People clustered around long tables in small groups, talking over one another, laughing, while at the same time carefully guiding needles through fabric.<\/p>\n

Darn It! meets on the first Sunday of each month, creating space for people to repair clothing together. There is no formal instruction, or step-by-step demonstrations, but learning still happens here. Someone leans over to show a stitch, another offers advice on how to reinforce a weak spot, and most people learn by trying, adjusting, and trying again. Much of the work centers on darning, a technique where thread is woven across a hole to rebuild the fabric, traditionally used for socks and knitwear.<\/p>\n

The session begins with a \u201cshare your hole\u201d circle. One by one, people hold up what they\u2019ve brought: jeans with a frayed hole in the pocket, sweaters eaten through by moths, and shirts split along the seams. That day, I was repairing a hole in my favorite pair of mittens, worn nearly every day through a long winter. Each piece carried clear signs of use, but everyone showed their garment\u2019s damage with pride, as if each hole were a badge of honor.<\/p>\n

At the center of the room is Kate Sekules, a mending historian and one of the club\u2019s hosts. She moves quickly from table to table, greeting regulars, pausing to examine damaged garments, and offering suggestions before moving on again. You can spot her easily\u2013 bright red hair tied into a floppy bun, black and grey clothing marked with small, neon repairs that stand out against the fabric.<\/p>\n

Sekules has been mending since childhood, long before it became more common online. When I asked her about its recent rise in popularity, she didn\u2019t respond with simple enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s amazing, but like everything that\u2019s a trend, you worry that it\u2019s going to go away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Visibly mended sweater using a darning technique at Darn It!, a monthly mending club hosted at the Textile Arts Center. Image by Dorothy Bailey<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her concern isn\u2019t the attention, but what happens to the practice as it spreads and how easily it can be reduced to something simply stylistic. Online, mending often appears as a set of trendy techniques, like sashiko stitching, which is a Japanese method that uses straight stitches to reinforce and decorate the fabric, or plaid darns in bright colors. In some cases, these aesthetics have already been taken up by fast fashion brands. For example, you can find patched and sashiko stitched jeans at\u00a0Free People<\/a>\u00a0advertised as \u201ccool and crafty,\u201d and sweatshirts meant to look upcycled with hand sewn patches on\u00a0Shein<\/a>\u00a0selling for $16.98. What begins as a way of keeping clothing in use becomes another trend to be consumed.<\/p>\n

Sekules argues that mending is being narrowed when it is treated as a trend. \u201cWe just need to keep mending going in every possible way, and not have it just be this trendy little thing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole way of life\u2026 that\u2019s what the world needs\u2013 the world needs mending.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Faux repaired jeans on Free People website. Image by Free People<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mending represents not just a set of techniques, but a shift in how clothing is treated. It interrupts the usual sequence of wear, damage, discard by inserting another step: repair. It slows things down, even if only slightly, and asks for attention in a system that rarely requires it.<\/p>\n

This approach to clothing is part of a broader movement known as slow fashion.<\/p>\n

The term slow fashion was coined by British academic Kate Fletcher in 2007, modeled after the Slow Food movement, which began in Italy as a response to the spread of fast food and industrialized eating. Just as slow food emphasized local production, transparency, and time, slow fashion developed as a critique of the accelerating pace of the clothing industry.<\/p>\n

Rather than focusing on speed and volume, slow fashion shifts attention to longevity. It asks how a garment is made, what it\u2019s made from, and how long it is expected to last. In practice, that can take many forms: higher-quality materials, smaller production runs, local manufacturing, or systems of repair and reuse that extend a garment\u2019s life beyond its first use.<\/p>\n

In practice though, these aren\u2019t foolproof solutions. They take more time, often cost more, and don\u2019t always fit easily into how most people buy and wear clothes. The result is a patchwork of small-scale efforts aimed at extending garment life and resisting over consumption.<\/p>\n

At Eva Joan, a repair and customization shop in the West Village, the work is technical and highly specialized. Garments are not only fixed but altered, embroidered, and, in some cases, completely transformed. On their\u00a0website<\/a>, the store boasts it will \u201crescue the unsavable and\u2026turn your item into your most prized possession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joy Nuanez, a chain stitcher at Eva Joan, came into the work through freelance embroidery and tailoring jobs after the pandemic. For her, repair isn\u2019t framed as a broader philosophy so much as a practice of learning how to work directly with fabric and the tools used to shape it.<\/p>\n

She specializes in chain stitching, a type of embroidery done on a vintage machine that requires full manual control.<\/p>\n

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Example of chain stitch embroidery, a popular embroidery technique characterized by looped stitches that create a continuous chain. Image by Joy Nuanez<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re controlling the needle, not the fabric,\u201d she said. \u201cIt takes a lot of brain-eye-hand coordination just to operate and get used to the machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process sits somewhere between handwork and machine work. The machine produces only a single type of stitch, but every movement is guided by the person using it. It\u2019s a slower process than digital embroidery, which is designed for speed and uniformity, but it produces something visibly different with slight variations, irregularities, and evidence of the hand.<\/p>\n

Chain stitching has a long history, appearing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century garment production, from military uniforms to varsity jackets. It largely disappeared with the rise of computerized embroidery, but in recent years it has reappeared, valued again for its texture.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are not just interested in what it looks like,\u201d Nuanez said, \u201cbut in the fact that it\u2019s made by hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

That interest has contributed to the growth of Eva Joan\u2019s work. What began as a small tailoring operation has expanded to include hand embroidery, visible mending, and more complex transformation projects. The shop has also received increased attention through press coverage, bringing in a wider range of customers.<\/p>\n

In recent years, repair and customization have been featured more frequently in fashion media as part of a broader shift towards sustainability and individuality. Shops like Eva Joan have been highlighted in outlets like\u00a0Vogue<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>W Magazine<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>positioning repair as something aspirational, aligned with personal style and environmental awareness.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach time they\u2019re in the news, it brings in different types of people,\u201d Nuanez said. \u201cVogue brought in younger, fashion-focused customers.\u00a0More recent coverage<\/a>\u00a0[on PIX11 News] brought in older people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even with that attention, repair remains a difficult sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of people who come in and are interested,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they can\u2019t validate the cost. People still don\u2019t see the value in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repair is often positioned as a more sustainable alternative to buying new clothing, but it depends on time, skill, and money, which are resources that aren\u2019t evenly distributed. In many cases, the cost of fixing a garment can exceed what it would cost to replace it, especially when the original item was cheaply made. For example, the creative repairs listed on Eva Joan\u2019s website range from $60 to $250 and above.<\/p>\n

This creates a disconnect between the idea of repair and its reality. While mending and reuse are promoted as solutions to overconsumption, they remain difficult to scale and become widely adopted within a system built on low prices and convenience. Choosing to repair is not about status or aesthetic but requires a change in intention and how value is understood.<\/p>\n

Materials complicate things further. Many contemporary garments are produced with synthetic blends and lower-quality fabrics that are harder to repair or don\u2019t hold up over time. Even in a shop dedicated to mending, not everything can be saved.<\/p>\n

Still, people keep bringing things in. Worn jeans, damaged knitwear, or older garments they\u2019ve held onto for years. Some come for straightforward repairs while others opt for more involved projects like turning old T-shirts into quilts or reupholstering their favorite chair.<\/p>\n

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Patched sweater by Eva Joan, a specialty tailor shop in the West Village, which offers creative repairs. Image by Eva Joan<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In those cases, repair looks less like a quick fix and more like an ongoing relationship with clothing. Garments are not just used and replaced, but maintained over the long-term.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the Darn it! Mending Club, where repair is informal and shared, Eva Joan shows what happens when repair becomes a paid service\u2013 where caring for clothing becomes labor and keeping clothing in use has to compete with the cost and convenience of replacing it.<\/p>\n

\u2726\u2726\u2726<\/p>\n

Designing for Longevity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Izzy Kostrzewa\u2019s (they\/them) studio sits in a second-floor apartment building about a five-minute walk from Prospect Park. The space is filled with sounds of everyday life, including faint chirps and the occasional loud squawk drifting in from a neighbor who appears to keep a large collection of birds. Inside, the studio is densely packed. Finished jackets and pairs of pants hang in clusters on clothing racks, and bins of fabric scraps fill over from shelves. The studio feels lived in, reflecting an ongoing, active process of making rather than a polished picture-perfect workspace.<\/p>\n

By the time clothing reaches the level of repair shops and mending circles, it is already in circulation, being maintained, altered, or extended after the fact. Kostrzewa\u2019s work sits a step earlier in the lifecycle. Instead of repairing after the clothing is worn, they design garments in a way that anticipates repair and long-term attachment from the beginning. For independent designer Kostrzewa, designing for longevity means rethinking materials, construction, and use from the start.<\/p>\n

Kostrzewa, who runs the fashion and textile practice Isaboko, builds their work around a set of constraints that double as a philosophy. \u201cEverything we do is based on three core principles, which are only using waste textiles, only using zero waste patterns and centering gender-free design,\u201d they explain. In contrast to conventional design processes that begin with new fabric, their garments start with discarded ones, primarily vintage kimonos from the mid-twentieth century that are taken apart and remade.<\/p>\n

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Zatsuyo Jacket by Isaboko, a New York based slow fashion brand. Image by Isabella Kostrzewa<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This decision came out of a critique of the fashion industry. \u201cFashion is bad for the earth, bad for people, bad for our health, bad for all the laborers,\u201d Kostrzewa says. Working with existing textiles becomes a way of intervening in that system at its source. \u201cWhat if you started from fabric that already existed. You aren\u2019t creating a new carbon footprint because this fabric is already decades old.\u201d<\/p>\n

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