Redress Design Award

Redress Design Award 2024 Digital Magazine Content List

What is Circular Fashion?

What does circularity mean, and how does it relate to fashion? With fashion being one of the world’s most polluting industries, the current ways must change. Enter circularity: a closed-loop system where the same materials are reused over and over again, conserving natural resources and diverting waste from landfill. Let’s take a closer look at how this applies to fashion, and how both consumers and designers can accelerate the transition to circularity — the only way forward for fashion.

Sustainability vs Circularity: Different, but Related

The terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘circularity’ are often used interchangeably, but are not the same. In order to understand the impact the fashion industry has on our ecosystem, we must first understand the differences and relationship between these two terms.

Sustainability is an umbrella term for a system that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. In the fashion industry, we pursue the three main pillars of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) by simultaneously:

  • Avoiding the depletion of natural resources (planet)

  • Avoiding the exploitation of workers (people)

  • Providing economic benefits (profit)

Circularity addresses the environmental side of sustainability, offering a model that takes responsibility for the entire life cycle of a product and its impact on the planet.

The Issue with Fashion’s Current Linear System

Linear Systems vs Circular Systems in the Fashion Value Chain: What’s the Difference?

Fashion’s current linear system is unsustainable: we have been producing and consuming fashion as if the natural resources needed are endless. Relying on this linear fashion system means to:

  • TAKE finite resources from nature 

  • MAKE clothing 

  • USE clothing for a short period of time

  • WASTE by throwing it away

To counter this drain on our planet’s resources and the associated impact on climate change, at Redress we believe in transitioning to a circular fashion system.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines circular fashion as a system relying on three guiding principles:

  • Eliminate waste and pollution

  • Circulate products and materials

  • Regenerate nature

In practice, going from LINEAR to CIRCULAR fashion means to:

  • REGENERATE nature instead of depleting when sourcing materials

  • MAKE clothing in ways that eliminate waste and pollution at every stage of design and production

  • USE and REUSE clothes responsibly, keeping them in use for as long as possible 

  • RECYCLE clothes when they can no longer serve their purpose

What Can Consumers Do to Promote Circular Fashion?

Consumers have a critical role in accelerating the transition to a circular fashion industry. 

First, we need to value our existing clothes more and keep them in use longer, such as by finding new looks through restyling. To be able to keep these for a long time, we must get into the habit of:

  • Caring for our clothes properly: reading care labels, washing only when needed and buying only what we know we can care for

  • Repairing our clothes to extend their lives

  • Altering clothes so they can fit us better (update the style, the fit, etc)

Then, when looking for change and newness, we need to buy less, buy better. Clothes can have multiple lives, we need to start considering:

  • Reselling and buying pre-loved clothes

  • Renting clothes, especially for special occasions clothes

  • Giving 

    • Within our community by swapping or 

    • To charities, but responsibly, i.e. by checking that they actually accept those types of clothes, and by choosing charities that are transparent about where the clothes will end-up. We can also seek out solutions like the Redress Takeback programme, where clothes are sorted and redistributed to maximise the value of each item. 

Once a product has become unwearable, we must make sure the materials will be recycled by:

Dropping off clothes and textiles to local textile recycling schemes: choosing programmes that are transparent about how they process these unwearable clothes and what will be the final product (recycled fibre, insulation material, cleaning cloth, etc). We must be critical of programmes that encourage overconsumption or use greenwashing elements.

How Can Fashion Designers Help?

Fashion designers are key to accelerating the transition to a circular fashion industry. When designing fashion products they must consider how their design decision will impact the entire lifecycle of the product. Key design strategies enable designers to go from linear to circular practices:

  • Designing for low impact materials by sourcing materials that regenerate nature 

  • Designing for low waste by making and remaking products that minimise the creation of waste at the development, manufacturing and even packaging stages

  • Designing for low impact process by making and remaking products in a way that is the least polluting and resource intensive at material extraction, manufacturing and distribution stages

  • Designing for longevity by creating products that will be reused over and over

  • Design for recyclability by considering product features and reverse logistics will allow for recycling at the end of use phase.

Hannah Lane