Grazia Middle East

by Kate Sekules

 

"The hottest item in your wardrobe right now is not by Alessandro Michele or Demna; it is an idea. Circularity is the buzzword du jour in fashion. But what and where is circularity? Why should you care? These are reasonable questions. For now, you may think of circularity as recycling with aspirations: turning old clothes into new, on repeat, baked into the entire system. The problem is, this is the opposite of fashion as we know it. Fashion has spent a couple of centuries training us to reject and re-buy on a seasonal basis, but, understandably, given our climate catastrophe, the industry has now changed its mind and wants what humanity wants, which is to save us from wipeout. At the same time, it still wants us to keep buying as much new stuff as possible. This is not mathematically viable. Fully functioning circular systems could help but we are nowhere near that. Fortunately, I have solved the world. It’s called co-design. All we need to do is to love our clothes, keeping them alive, circulating, and fashionably mended. Trust me, this is more fun than click-shopping anyway...."