Making new out of old is called “upcycling”. In Nevers in the Nièvre, the brand Losanje plays the intelligent recycling game to the fullest. Here nothing is destroyed, everything is reused to create new clothes. A virtuous circle for the planet.
In the sewing workshop, little hands choose, cut and assemble the fabric to bring new pieces to life. At Losanje, recycling also rhymes with quality. “You have to pay attention to stains, holes, colors”, explains an employee. From fanny packs to pants, from winter jackets to backpacks, there’s something for everyone. All the clothes, straight out of the designers’ creativity, are necessarily unique. “It immediately fascinated me, to be able to recover as many pieces as possible, to create patterns on old things”, explains Tom.
Here, nothing is lost, everything is transformed, like these little squares of soft fabrics that can be used as eyeglass wipes. Faced with planned obsolescence, the eco-responsible brand is already meeting with great success and is now targeting the windows of the great Parisian boulevards. This alternative production model has a cost. Count still around 150 euros for a garment of the brand.
Since December 2021, Losanje has already given a second life to more than 18,000 kilos of clothing and textiles. Once collected from sorting centers, they are then cut and assembled in Nevers.
By choosing second-hand clothes, the brand intends to respond, in its own way, to the new environmental challenges of textile production. The fashion industry is the second largest industry polluting of the world. “We asked ourselves the question of how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing the recycling of textile waste: the answer is upcycling”, assures Simon Peyronnaud, co-founder of Losanje.
Unlike recycling, upcycling transforms the material without destroying it. In the workshop, no virgin raw material is extracted, no large textile processing machine is used.
According to a report (PDF) according to McKinsey, fashion emitted the equivalent of 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2018, which would represent around 4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the United Nations evokes a percentage ranging from 2 to 8% of global carbon emissions.