I began working as a fashion designer in 1997. The deeper I got into the industry, the more shocked I was by the amount of waste my industry was producing. It didn’t seem right. To do my small part, I began incorporating upcycling principles into my design work (both for my clothing line and the costume designs I was doing for theater productions). By 2002, all of the clothing I produced was upcycled.
Upcycling is a process that brings leftover materials back into the production cycle with the help of design. William McDonough and Michael Braungart provide a more formal definition in their book Cradle to Cradle: “The upcycling method, or upward re-processing, is defined as bringing waste back into the consumption chain through design by placing it higher up in the chain than it previously was - this includes environmental as well as commercial and aesthetical value - while also accounting for the product’s future.”