Projects

Anülü

Anülü brings together high-street brands and garment collectors to create curated pre-owned lines for fashion lovers, inspiring them to re-think their consumption habits and the responsibility of owning a piece of clothing throughout its lifespan from production to disposal or reuse.

Purpose

STUDENTS INVOLVED

Cristina Mogollón García

ABOUT

Independent project

Encouraging responsible and sustainable consumption of fashion

One of fashion’s biggest problems is the amount of waste of finished goods. By understanding consumers’ behaviours around buying and using clothes, I could notice there is a disconnection between responsible consumption and disposal of garments. Consumers donate and associate this with being responsible, but it means they are just giving away the problem to buy more, meaning brands will produce more too. Many companies have responded by creating more products that we can buy, calling them sustainable fashion, but they still have environmental and social footprint.   The aim was to explore the role of consumers in tackling the negative impact of the industry, generating awareness and encouraging more responsible habits when buying, using, taking care and reusing clothes, and with a vision to the near future understand how a complex industry such as this one can evolve by breaking paradigms and challenging the current linear production model.

Helping fashion lovers change their habits

Fashion lovers have an important role in using and disposing of clothes intelligently, but they need encouragement to act. Anülü provides information to educate and inspire consumers through its platform. 1. Offering tips on how to take care of fabrics and clothes when washing, drying and using them to prolong the lifespan.  2. Facilitating the process of donating clothes properly by connecting consumers to official garment collectors that will do the sorting and recycle the fibres correctly.  3. Helping fashion lovers create a new relationship with big brands by understanding the influence these have on consumption habits. By giving more exposure to the second hand market and pieces made with recycled fibres, both consumers and brands help the system become more circular.  4. Defying trends by selling exclusive and unique collections, even in big retail stores, and encouraging fashion lovers to explore their own personal style.

Connecting fashion lovers, brands and garment collectors

Anülü sees second hand market and circularity as a logical approach to change the industry’s model and reduce production and processing impacts on the environment. Extraction of new materials have the biggest carbon footprint, and carbon savings can be achieved by reusing materials or extending the lifetime of clothing, but only if this displaces a sale of a new garment. The industry is a complex system of systems that needs collective effort to reduce its impacts, that’s why it connects three of the biggest players to drive change. Each player acts in an important stage of garment’s life cycle, so they need to be connected to keep materials in the loop as much as possible and reduce excessive production and overconsumption.

Tapping into existing resources to create pre-owned collections

Anülü service is B2B and facilitates the production of the pre-owned collections. Garment collectors and brands collaborate in the creation from collecting the garments, cleaning, reworking or recycling, to re-tagging, selling and creating in-store experiences for consumers to get involved.  Garment collectors have the warehouses and logistics to collect clothes, brands have design knowhow and spaces to sell and reach to a wider public. Anülü will provide technologies to track inventory, advice from textile experts to understand the composition of fibres and potential of pieces and finally designers and seamstresses to help re-work second-hand garments.   A system like this enhances further development of the textile waste infrastructure and management, fibre recycling technologies and policy makers to regulate overproduction of new garments. At the same time, it encourages brands to lower the use of new resources and increase the use of sustainably sourced or recycled materials in their overall production.

“It is excess which is a passing trend” - Orsola de Castro (Fashion Revolution)

Sadly, there is no such thing as 100% sustainable fashion, but buying less, using more, disposing correctly and cutting production of new garments will have both a social and an environmental impact.

From local in 2021 to a complete system in 2030

The Pulse of Fashion report stated that 60% of the industry has enablers in place to lower its negative impact, but implementation is still needed. Fibre recycling technologies need further development and changing the industry requires an enormous investment of human and technological resources. By doing something like selling their pre-owned lines, the industry is preparing the demand side for the transformation that needs to happen and is connecting the dots for these human and technological developments.  Anülü is visualised to work at local level due to the current scale of recycled fabrics and difficulty to reuse all the second-hand garments. These local systems will replicate and start working as gears for a greater system that will be completely in place by 2030 with the correct policies in place to make it work and better production practices that enable circularity of the fashion industry.

special thanks

I would like to thank the people who accompanied me during this journey for all their support and insightful feedback and teachings.  Andrea Edmunds - Mentor  Orsola de Castro - Expert at Fashion Revolution  Katarina Rimarcikova - Expert at Circular Economy Club London  Emma Shaw - Library of Things  Sofia, Diana, Catalina and Valeria - Fashion lovers  Nathalia Rueda - Animations

Projects

Anülü

Connecting fashion lovers, brands and garment collectors

Tapping into existing resources to create pre-owned collections

students involved on the project