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Media stories about A-list celebrities with the audacity to “recycle” their outfits by wearing them more than once, or even regular folks stashing unworn fast fashion in their closets, while continuing to buy more “throwaway” items to keep up with fashion trends, are starting to feel like old news.
Today, according to Medium, the fashion industry increasingly grasps that a more environmentally-aware fashion consumer, driven by next-gen respect for the world’s limited resources, and realizing that style can’t necessarily be bought, is drawn to circular fashion. This is fashion that wants to trim the natural resources used to make our clothing, and divert products from landfills. It aims to extend the life cycle of clothing items through recycling and repurposing.
Reclypt, a New York mending business powered by women, according to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is a community-minded business for people looking to increase the longevity of their style on any budget.
Reclypt’s story revolves around community
The volume of unwanted clothing and textiles that ends up buried in landfills has risen at an alarming rate in recent decades. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, between 1960 and 2018, the volume of textiles in landfills skyrocketed from 1.7 million tons to 11.3 million tons.
As good good good reports, founder, Rachel Ceruti was moved by worrying statistics like these to create Reclypt in 2021, motivated to help reduce clothing waste and heal the planet.
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What she started as a fashion marketplace for upcycled fashion items sourced from fellow small businesses, evolved into a circular fashion enterprise fostering DIY solutions to repairing and reinventing pieces of clothing to extend their life cycle. It does this through teaching the basics of embellishing and sewing clothes in its own mending club, with an emphasis on community.
Ceruti outlines to CanvasRebel, a platform for storytelling by creatives, how this was a natural progression. As Reclypt nurtured a community passionate about reducing fashion waste, a natural demand arose for the skills to keep clothing and accessories in circulation.
“At Reclypt, we believe style lasts longer with community. The Reclypt community is the driving force behind everything we do; from the upcycled fashion community to the DIY repair community,” she says. This is because, Ceruti believes, people seek community and ways to be more sustainable, and Reclypt enables people to do both.
A rich menu of circular fashion events
To spread the word and grow its community, Reclypt offers a smorgasbord of original events to educate and engage New Yorkers on circular fashion practices.
Pop-up mending and upcycling workshops featuring plenty of skills sharing, regularly appear at a wide range of New York venues. CanvasRebel mentions an upcycling workshop at a venture capital firm in Manhattan, a clothing swap at a vintage clothing store, and a “swap and mend” event for a runners’ group.
In fact, partnerships with like-minded businesses, both bigger and smaller, are a win-win for Reclypt, as besides expanding its reach, these also help the business learn, develop and implement best practices in areas like techniques, software and communities.
And once bitten by the circular fashion bug, it seems that consumers stay loyal to its ethical consumption principles and repurposing practice. Ceruti proudly reveals that almost half of event attendees are repeat customers.
As one fan of Reclypt’s upcycling event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn comments below a post promoting it, as quoted on Good Good Good: “I am so ready to spend the day surrounded by green life and community.”
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