Week 4: Circularity, Minimalism, & How I Plan to Make My Brand for Petite

Welcome back to my blog! This week I started thinking about how to make my business more circular. (A fashion business is circular if the products that they create are eventually recycled. The more a fashion business is able to ensure that its products are recycled the more circular it is. The more circular a fashion business is the more ecologically sustainable it is.) 

Earlier, I was toying with the idea of creating different types of clothing articles for different collections. However, thinking about circularity gave me second thoughts. How would I be able to take in old clothing from past collections and recycle them if the materials used in each collection were different? I came up with two ideas to solve this problem.

1. I could start a rental service alongside my clothing brand (similar to what Anthropology has been doing) or resell the clothes (like Patagonia). However, this solution did not account for clothing that had been used beyond the amount that it could be worn.
2. I also considered the possibility of bringing back the types of materials that were used in one collection in other years in a cyclical manner. However, this would limit the variety of the clothing in each collection. Moreover, it’s very expensive for small businesses to recycle their old clothes. (I should clarify that my brand is going to start small because it’s just not possible to start with a big brand, especially as a non-celebrity with no fashion industry experience.)

I brought these ideas up to my onsite advisor, who presented me with one simple solution: recycling companies. Recycling companies take in old clothes, shoes, and other textile-based items, sort them based on their composition, and recycle them into new fabrics. And apparently, these recycling companies are often open to partnerships with smaller businesses. It was really nice being able to find such a simple solution to this problem. Nevertheless, I do like the idea of having a rental service/second-hand shop attached to my fashion business.

This week, through the sustainability course that I’m taking, I also learned about the brand Mud Jeans. Through this brand, one can either buy their jeans independently on their website or they could get a membership. Through this membership, customers are able to get a new pair of jeans every year. I hope to incorporate a similar idea into my business. I like the idea of having a subscription to gain a few items seasonally in order to gradually build a capsule wardrobe over time and replace items that grow worn out as needed based on the weather. This could be a really interesting way to incorporate minimalism into my business.

Furthermore, since my brand is going to be a petite brand, I started thinking more about my struggles to find clothes as a petite individual. I realized that the hardest part is finding pants, skirts, and midi and maxi dresses. Oftentimes, brands that do sell petite clothes, sell these clothing items with a petite length as well as a regular length. However, this doesn’t account for the variation in leg lengths. To fix this problem, in my business, I want to create clothes that better fit customers by selling more inseam variations for pants and length variations in skirts and dresses.

Building on this idea, I plan to use AI to help customers visualize how different articles of clothing will fit them. Often times different lengths/inseams look different based on the fit of a clothing item. AI can be used to show customers how different inseams/lengths will fit them differently based on their body proportions, and describe to them which clothing items would best flatter their body types.

That’s what I came up with this week! I can’t wait to share how my project will continue to develop next week.