As a wild flower blooms on a mountain of waste, the beginning of beauty can be seen once again.
This is how the designer of Nåd, describes the re-use of dead-stock fabric left behind by other brands, which can be repurposed, up-cycled and turned into back into contemporary fashion, with the right love and care for design.
Dead-stock fabrics are the left over fabrics of other fashion houses who overestimated their needs. Traditionally, brands would hold on to their excess fabrics for a few seasons and then send them to the landfills. We rescue these dead-stock fabrics from a warehouse, before they are thrown away and then turn them back into beautiful dresses.
Because we use dead-stock, we rarely find large quantities of any one fabric. Small rolls mean small production runs. Often times, we make only 1 or 2 dresses in a specific fabric or print.
It's the perfect win/win for a creative designer. We get beautiful cotton fabric without polluting the planet, and our customers get a one of a kind, Iris dress that was handmade and careful considered.
It is estimated that 45 million tons of dead-stock fabric, goes to land fill or incineration each year which is part of why fashion is not sustainable, causing detrimental effects on our climate and the ever growing waste problem. It all starts with the over farming of cotton to produce the fabric, pesticides and dye chemicals into the water system. Water pollution feeds into the flora and fauna, wiping out species completely. While pesticides in surrounding farm areas, are effecting human health and essentially food supplies. As a designer working in the industry for almost 20 years, I have always worked alongside luxury and contemporary brands. Clothes are part of who we are as humans and my passion for fashion and design strives me to keep creating. However creating a brand which can be as sustainable as possible in 2020, involves taking things slow, sourcing dead-stock fabrics, scouting out organic fabrics and working with NGO's to weave plant based fabrics.
