Weekday embraces sustainability with 'remade' items

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 13, 2019

H&M Group is diving deeper into sustainability with a new project for its youth-focused Weekday brand having just launched online.

The Swedish company said that Weekday’s designers have taken a number of pieces and “altered the designs based on current trends”. They’ve remade garments from old collections into “new seasonal designs that resonate with their customers during summer.”

It's one way of addressing the big issue of clothing waste which came into sharp relief last year when it emerged that Burberry had incinerated tens of millions of pounds worth of luxury goods that year.

While Burberry quickly changed its approach to dealing with unsold goods, the scandal shone a spotlight on the huge amounts of waste that the clothing industry generates, hence the steady stream of remade and resale initiatives that we’re hearing about at the moment.

H&M said that the Re-Made capsule collection takes an upcycling approach to design and is co-created with the its Laboratory, the internal innovation department that explores new business models. “This project is just one of the ways that the H&M group aims to create a two-way dialogue with their customers and to provide them with sustainable fashion that they really want, thus making smarter choices for the environment and creating clothes that are more likely to be loved for longer,” it said.

Made exclusively from denim, the Weekday in-house design team started the process by identifying existing garments with the most potential for adaptation, and subsequently created new styles. It explained: “Design solutions are as simple as noticing that trends are moving towards denim vests, and therefore removing the sleeves from denim jackets. Afterwards, the leftover materials from those sleeves can be transformed into something completely new, for example labels.”