A few months ago! we met Claire² and Clarisse. Together! they created the brand Les Hirondelles with the ambition of reducing the impact of fashion. And to achieve this! they decided to recycle fabric scraps from the French textile industry! For our part! at 1083! the circular economy is part of our mission. We do everything to produce as vietnam email list cleanly as possible and to reuse waste as much as possible. This meeting was inevitable and creating an upcycled and long-lasting garment together was obvious. We tell you the story of this collaboration.
But what exactly is upcycling?
3 women are at the origin of Les Hirondelles! Claire Chiquet (DA)! Clarisse Cazenave (SD Marketing) and Claire Alvernhe (stylist)! all working closely or remotely for the fashion and textile industry. They decided to embark together on an adventure that brought them as close as possible to their convictions! Several meetings have made the brand evolve into what it is today: Eric Boël (Tissages de Charlieu) Eric Ducoin (Atelier JRH) Olivier Balas (Balas Textiles) or Thomas! founder of 1083 😉 The brand is banking on a new way of thinking and creating fashion. The goal? To change the way we collaborate to last – 1083 x time for the planet consume but also produce. By making themselves known in the ecosystem among brands! weavers and workshops! Les Hirondelles hopes to raise awareness of an entire sector with a simple and concrete solution: upcycling.
Recycling from above! upcycling… are all terms that we use to refer ba leads to upcycling! defined as: “the action of recovering materials or products that are no longer used in order to transform them into materials or products of higher quality or utility.” At Les Hirondelles! the idea is to use already existing materials! to have the least possible impact on production.
Reusing textile industry waste
Les Hirondelles develop products based on the materials they have 1083 km available and the brand’s positioning is clear: to offer timeless basics made from natural materials. In 2013! Eric Boel! CEO of Tissages de Charlieu! agreed to weave our first jeans and even went so far as to adapt his tool to be able to recreate the real Denim twill cotton canvas. Inspired by this natural (organic cotton) and resistant canvas! Les Hirondelles developed a prototype of a shirt and then an overshirt with the scraps of our DenimOriginal. A garment with a “worker” cut (editor’s note: workwear) that both represents workers and emphasizes craftsmanship. They presented the prototype to Thomas in 2019 at the Made in France trade fair! he tried it on and was won over! that’s when things got serious!
The approach in complete transparency
When weaving denim! micro-defects can make certain portions of the fabric unusable for making our jeans on an industrial scale (pulled thread when a needle breaks or slight dyeing defect). To prevent the weaver from ending up with scraps on his hands! the swallows buy this material at a lower price than new material. To make this overshirt! you need 1m50 of DenimOriginal! which makes 300 meters of revalued fabric for this production! The overshirt is then of course cut and made in France in the Landes! its buttons.