PROJECT SUMMARY
Did you know that the fashion industry is the second most pollutant in the world?
RI Clothess(Reinventing Innovation Clothes) seeks to palliate this by introducing clothes upcycling, a way to practice circular economy. Here we take your old jeans and create new clothes with an amazing sense of style, exclusive for teenagers. We are also projecting an innovative economic model where jeans donors receive a generous discount coupon to buy our products, so all parts get benefits, especially our planet!
WHY?
There is a global call to reduce fast fashion’s waste that produces: plastic fibers, which are polluting the oceans, the wastewater, toxic dyes, and the exploitation of underpaid workers. During our research, we couldn’t find brands that do clothing upcycling in our country, so a project like this could really lay the foundations of a trend that merges environmental sustainability with modern style for young people, aligning with global efforts to transform the fashion industry.
HOW?
We brought our old jeans, washed them, made sketches of our designs, cut the jeans and then joined the different parts to create the new garments. These steps reduce significantly the water used during the production process, only using it during the cleaning process, which is obviously necessary. We do our best to find a way to use all the elements of the jeans and not throw away the different parts, not even the small patches.
WHAT?
We found that by using 2 sets of jeans to make a bag, 5 for a jacket and 3 for new pants, we effectively transformed broken and unusable jeans (previously valued at 0 gs) into valuable new garments, each sellable for 200.000 gs. This process significantly retrieves and adds value to the original materials,which is why it can be called upcycling instead of recycling , demonstrating the effectiveness of our prototype in creating economically and environmental sustainable fashion.
SO WHAT?
Our research demonstrates that RI Clothess significantly contributes to two Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): N° 11 “Sustainable cities and communities” and N° 13 “Climate Action” . By reducing waste produced by the fast fashion industry in Paraguay, Ri Clothess is pioneering a sustainable approach to clothing production and through upcycling efforts, our project transforms jeans waste materials into valuable products. The impact will be very positive for our communities because, as the production cost is low, the selling price can also be low. Many low-income families can benefit not only from purchasing these clothes, but also from producing them based on our ideas.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We believe there is a lot more room to keep RI Clothess growing. We want to create new designs and types of clothing like bucket hats, dresses, and shorts, and we are also thinking about upcycling plastic bags to start trying to design accessories. Furthermore, we would love to improve our upcycling clothes by using other old clothes but with different fabrics like nylon, polyester, cotton, etc.
REFERENCES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Moda sostenible: ""El mundo debe ser consciente del impacto negativo del fast fashion"" (infonegocios.com.py)
The environmental costs of fast fashion (unep.org)
We want to thank the support we got from our mentors in this process: Mr. Luciano Santiviago, Miss Ruth Gonzalez and Miss Malena Granada and the space of the Creative Building in our School for providing us the tools we needed to make this project a reality.
JUDGES FEEDBACK
Your initiative is incredibly inspiring! It really tackles the critical issue of pollution in the fashion industry. Also I can see you're really talented in clothing design, those are definitely garments I'd like to have in my closet. Great job on combining sustainability with fashion!