The fashion industry begins to change its label from “one of the most polluting” and points to a greener present and future. Upcycling is what many designers embrace today, and we show you what it is all about.

The fashion wears protective of the environment from the hand of the upcycling, a trend that increasingly involves brands and designers.

It started as a cause for emerging creators and independent labels. But little by little, the leading companies in the fashion industry also began to bet on developing more responsible consumption habits and more sustainable production methods.

And the keyword is upcycling, a movement that came to design based on “three fundamental Rs”: reduce (buy less, combat hyper-consumerism), reuse (extend the useful life of a garment, do not throw it away, and give it a new life and a second opportunity) and recycling (using discarded raw materials and fabrics to make clothing).

The term upcycling is precisely a combination of the words recycle (recycling) and improve and enhance (up).

In the following video you can see a collection where this trend is the one that governs each garment and outfit:

Reduce, reuse, recycle

This trend responds to a call to wear and reuse the clothes we buy, and then continue to wear them through its reformulation and updating in a new version of the same garment or in a different one through touch-ups and changes.

Upcycling imagines a world of fashion without seasons, is inspired by the global initiative Fashion Revolution and also challenges consumers to know where it comes from, how it is made, and who makes the clothes they wear.

It is related to the movement called “slow fashion” – the opposite of fast fashion – which encourages people to buy less and fewer clothes and to bet on “timeless” fashion. And also with the “zero waste” movement that aims to minimize waste.

But upcycling goes a step beyond this trend and invites you to create something new with something old, and even make a better and more valuable product.

Hence one of the translations of the original English term for upcycling is “upcycling” or “creative recycling”.

Because more than a process and a technique, it is a new modality and concept that aims to reformulate things – reinvent them – so that they are more durable and thus give them a second chance through generally manual work.