The interdisciplinary fashion label VAIN and Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto Oy (LSJH), a municipal waste management company, come together to show that an innovative approach along with collaboration across industries can create systemic change.
The interdisciplinary Finnish fashion label VAIN introduced VAIN Upcycled, a product line consisting of 100% post-consumer textile waste, at Copenhagen Fashion Week 2023.
The brand first garnered global attention with its approach to upcycling in 2022 with VAIN x McDonald's Upcycled Workwear Collection, fashioned entirely of repurposed work uniforms of staff. The project reached over 200 million people through social media and was featured by the New York Times, the Financial Times, and CNN, to name a few.
“We are drawn to the idea that the clothes have a history. We want to give them a new meaning and context,” says CEO Roope Reinola, who founded the label in 2022 with his childhood friend, designer, and creative director Jimi Vain. Sustainability sits deep in the brand's DNA across all operations. “It is a hygiene factor, not a marketing gimmick if you want to exist as a consumer brand in 10 years,” Reinola says.
A match made in heaven
To source the materials for the new collection, the brand teamed up with an unconventional partner in the fashion arena, Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto Oy (LSJH), a waste management company in charge of the nationwide coordination of textile-waste collection in Finland.
It is a match made in heaven, both parties say. The VAIN team previously scoured flea markets for materials. It was time-consuming, unreliable, and expensive. LSJH, on the other hand, has plenty of material available. In 2023 alone, they handled a staggering 600,000 kg of textile, either through reselling garments that were still in good condition, recycling through shredding them into raw fibers to create new materials, or, worst case scenario, burning.
In the presorting phase, the LSJH team recognized that there was plenty of material that wasn’t suitable for reselling as garments, but too good to be recycled. “Typically, there would be small wear and tear, a button missing or a broken zipper,” explains sales manager Miira Ojanen, a creative industries veteran turned circular economy advocate. She invited a handful of businesses to a workshop to discuss how to use the raw material.
“We in the waste management industry need to think further than our immediate task, to the business to realize new commercial possibilities. We must welcome the companies to get inspired by material and develop ideas to create value. There is enormous potential in post-consumer textile we sort,” Ojanen says. Soon after the workshop, LSJH set up a material bank service for creatives and businesses. The goal: To direct 10% of their total sorted textile waste flow to repair, resell, and upcycling.
Rethinking production for upcycled products
One of the first customers of LSJH’s service was VAIN. For them, upcycling has required rethinking the entire production line. Based on Jimi Vain’s designs, the creative team first defines the material needs in color, weight, and material. LSJH’s sorting professionals then get to work following the brief. For now, it is denim only, manually sorted and delivered bi-monthly, with plans to expand to jerseys, leather, and woolen suit fabrics.
The final pieces are manufactured by a network of experienced tailors, all based in Helsinki.
“It is not cheap, but easier and more fun when people are close by. It helps solve the challenges of each piece,” Reinola says. Each item is unique and built up like a puzzle from materials cut from pre-used garments. “In a way, the design process continues during the product development phase,” Reinola explains. “It takes a lot of discussions and testing, it is an investigative work of sorts. Some products just click, while others, we have to abandon. They just take way too much time to be possible to produce commercially.”
Navigating the pitfalls
While the material itself is affordable, the production is complex and time-consuming. Quality is a priority for VAIN, even if the fabric is pre-used. Textile as upcycling material poses extra challenges, as it is easily perishable and prone to moisture, dirt, and mold. The big challenge, then, becomes profit.
“It is not an easy road. And we often talk as if there was a contradiction between responsibility and commercialism, but a responsible product can only make an impact, if it gains commercial volume,” says Ojanen.
So far, the upcycling approach has resonated well with VAIN’s audience of global young adults. “After launching in mid-February, the range accounts for 10-15% of year-to-date sales already.”
From fragmented artisanal market to mainstream – the growing momentum of upcycling
The interest is growing globally, too. While it’s hard to estimate the size of the fragmented upcycling market alone, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the ‘resell, rental, repair, and remaking' category, which upcycling too is a part of, made up for 3,5% of the total fashion industry in 2023. In 2030, it is expected to make up 23% of the total fashion market already.
The development is further aided by regulation. From 2025, the EU waste directive will require the member states to organize a separate collection for textile waste, increasing the amount of pre-used textile material available. In preparation for this, Finland is paving the way as one of the first in the world to offer nationwide textile waste collection.
The roadmap to success
According to Miira Ojanen, there is plenty of work left to make the most of the potential upcycling offers. For starters, the term isn’t particularly well understood among consumers. Modifying old to make new is an age-old practice, but in a commercial context, it easily gets lost in the flood of confusing and erraneous sustainability messaging and greenwashing that consumers face every day. In addition to communications efforts, the upcycling product selection should be more diverse, hitting multiple price points, and it should be made easier for a consumer to purchase upcycled clothes, too, she lists. “Think of a dedicated logo in all upcycled products and an area dedicated for upcycled products in the department stores…”, she brainstorms.
The VAIN team, too, remains enthusiastic. In the short term, the label is looking to replace some of the virgin materials in their seasonal collections with upcycled materials. The long-term will depend on whether they find the right recipe to scale up production volume profitably enough to compete on a commercial scale.
To Ojanen, this is all just a beginning, hopefully of something much bigger. “As soon as we find the working recipes for how to scale up upcycling, we can turn up the volume and utilize large amounts of recycled materials – and share the recipe with others, too.”
“You just have to dare to think creatively, not do as others do or as has always been done before.”
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