🌿 The Fashion Letter | #39 📩

The small team behind the brand is a group of women dedicated to forging fashion for a better future, with a vision to connect and empower women through sustainable design, creating opportunities for people to thrive.

The brand's journey is an evolution rooted in the founder’s experiences as an Australian refugee and her family connections to her native Vietnam. She shares the origins of "All The Wild Roses."

The brand was inspired by the founder's first visit to her native Vietnam at the age of 19, where she met many of her extended family members. Like most women in the region, they worked as seamstresses but faced limited opportunities due to a lack of skills, education, and access to markets.

Following this experience and a growing bond with her family, the aspiration arose to create something together that would provide work opportunities and prosperity not only for them but for the women in their community in Hai Phong, Vietnam.

From humble beginnings, the inexperienced team began by remaking timeless vintage styles as a way to learn the art of creating beautiful designs. Despite initially struggling to produce even basic T-shirts, through years of self-taught training, they have grown into skilled tailors, now crafting the brand’s timeless, vintage-inspired designs.

In this episode, Brittany Sierra explores the latest TikTok trend, "underconsumption core." She discusses how economic factors like inflation and financial uncertainty are driving this trend and examines the deeper motivations behind it, from ethical and environmental values to sheer economic necessity.

Brittany highlights the psychological and social influences on underconsumption core and draws fascinating parallels between this trend and the demand for counterfeit luxury goods. Both, she argues, are responses to income inequality and social signaling.

Citing recent studies and articles, Brittany delves into whether underconsumption core is likely to have a lasting impact on consumer behavior or if it's merely a temporary response to current economic conditions. She also looks at how marketing tactics can shape and sustain such trends.

Join the conversation as Brittany uncovers the complexities of consumer behavior and sustainability, and consider the potential long-term effects of this intriguing trend.

Facts on the folk demanding change

As much as brands have a role to play, it ends with the people who support - or don’t support - their products. Here’s some insight into what they want - and what’s stopping them.

1. In the US alone, 80% of young adults (18-34 years old) are willing to pay more for sustainable brands. (PDI Technologies)

2. Globally, 65% of fashion buyers care about the environment. (Bain & Company)

3. 70% want to know how the brands they shop from contribute to social as well as environmental issues. Only 46% actually consider these before buying. (Markstein and Census Insights)

4. The shift in attitudes is clear in social media. In 2020, the phrase “slow fashion” generated more than 90 million social impressions. Just remember that one thing is transparency, another is greenwashing. (Lyst)

5. 76% of the 33 million first-time secondhand shoppers in 2022, intend to increase their spending on secondhand clothing. At the same time, more brands are launching take back programs. (GlobalData)

6. 69% of consumers feel that the importance of sustainability has grown over the last two years. Yet, they acknowledge cost, access, and lack of clarity, as the main barriers to adoption. (NielsenIQ)

📅How Logistics Can Help Fashion Companies Advance Toward Net Zero Ambitions📢

October 22, 2024 / 16:00 - 17:00 Zoom

Join this online Masterclass on how logistics can assist fashion companies in achieving net-zero ambitions.

Supported by Maersk, this event will facilitate a comprehensive discussion on sustainability goals and decarbonization opportunities within the fashion industry's logistics sector.

You will be able to engage in an interactive dialogue with a diverse panel, including industry experts and guest speakers.

The Masterclass will also reference the report "Reverse Logistics for Circular Fashion Systems: An Exploration of Untapped Potential," providing actionable insights and guidance to help the fashion industry leverage logistics for a sustainable future.

Register here

Currently less than 1% of all garments are recycled to a high quality. The rest are downcycled, incinerated or landfilled, translating into a loss of USD 100 billion worth of material annually.

But, Resortecs has developed an innovative solution that helps solve a widespread fashion industry challenge: how to recycle garments more effectively.

The challenge relates to stitched clothes such as jeans or jackets, that need to be taken apart before their constituent materials can be recycled. The existing disassembly process is time-consuming and costly, as the garment and its components are held together by a synthetic high-strength thread, which in most cases is polyester. Before recycling, the garment has to be separated and the thread removed, otherwise the quality of the recycled product will be compromised.

Resortecs has designed a new type of thread that makes the disassembly process easier. Their threads are available for different melting-points (150°C, 170°C and 200°C) and dissolved using a commercial oven. The choice of thread depends on the type of garment that is being taken apart. The Resortecs® solution allows up to 500kg of garments (equivalent to more than 1000 pairs of jeans) to be dismantled at the same time.

In the Resortecs® process only 10% maximum of textile material is lost, and the integrity of the textile is not damaged, meaning that new garments can use a higher percentage of recycled material.