Summer daze and the WA team are aiming for a better work/ life balance.
Simon is away on holiday ('again?'... we tease) over in NYC with Bea and kids.
Jamie prepares for a baby brother for Isabelle. Hannah spends weekends
fastidiously crafting more bridal and bride's maids dresses for mates. And I have been for a mind and soul tickling weekend away at the Port
Elliot Festival in Cornwall, simply one of
the best kept festival secrets. (Shhh...)
So there’s a sneak peak into what we get up to when we’re not plotting
and planning for a zero waste world... We'd love to hear what floats the boats of any worn again wearers out there…
Write a comment and let us know what else we might want to be doing to keep the upcycling juices flowing in our out of hours time.
It has been crazy HOT these past few days - and we've been loving it! And speaking of hot things we love, check out this video of Worn Again's front woman Cyndi being interviewed by Insead Business School. It's an oldie but a goodie as she explains quite simply what we do, how we do it and most importantly why we do it.
Also in the press this week was the lovely and talented Benjamin Shine (we collaborated with him on the Eurostar Train Managers Bag) who was in high spirits as the Taxi Elephant he designed for the Elephant Parade raised a whopping £40K at auction for charity last week. In the interview with Open Magazine, Ben talks about his inspirations, work methods and gives us... (read more)
The Queen had to celebrate without us in beautiful Rome at
her ‘Green is the New Black: Eco Fashion goes Trendy’ exhibition. Not sure
where the shot of her modelling our Worn Again cheeky sling bag went…
We also met with our upcycling partners in crime Orsola and
Fillipo at From Somewhere, Kerry from Junky Stylingand Nin from Goodone to
plot out next steps for RE:Facto, a large scale upcycling production unit we’re
looking to create in the Thames Gateway.Big project… more on that soon.
And our very own Chief Upcycler made an appearance in the Telegraph Magazine.
It's a bittersweet week
for us as we say goodbye to the lovely Blake Brown who has been interning with
us for the last 2 and half months. In that time she has reorganised our
“dungeon” of materials, overseen the details of production for our Train Managers
Bag for Eurostar, researched designers, written up tech packs and more all
while smiling!
It has been an absolute pleasure having Blake with us. We wish her the very best of luck with the rest of her course and hope that she'll stay in touch!
(In an attempt to cut words and keep it simple we’ve decided to condense our weekly blogs in under 100 words. Fans, friends and freaks alike can follow our story as it unfolds on the journey. Installment number 1…)
Congrats to Richard Wassell who won a pair of Eurostar tickets to Paris as part of our mid April competition. Enjoy the trip and grab us some good cheese while you’re over there.
Inside WA, Simon, our head of finance, continued to struggle with the basics of Sage – a world away from his life in investment banking.
We also hosted a class of Dutch students who were enthralled by our upcycling ways and came up with some ingenious ideas themselves, including an oven glove made from Eurostar staff cardigans…
Cyndi, Jamie and Simon celebrate signing of a deal… more soon.
It might not save us, but it can influence our impact on the world…
Last night we celebrated the launch of the Sustainable Futures exhibition at the Design Museum with our Eurostar pals and champions, Pascale and Sandra.
The exhibition is running until September and explores a range of products, concepts and projects that address issues of sustainability in their design, including Worn Again’s very own Eurostar Train Managers bag, designed by Benjamin Shine, made from decommissioned staff uniforms and seat cushions.
The bags are soon to go into production at our manufacturing partner’s factory in Woolwich and should be live and in action on board Eurostar trains speeding through the hearts of London, Brussels and Paris in a few short months.
Other forward thinking concepts and designs include our very own Christopher Raeburn (designer of Worn Again’s (read more)
Following the news of our feature in Aprils’ issue of WIRED magazine mentioned in the previous blog post, we were filled with much excitement and joy and thought to ourselves, how could we pass this feeling onto our Worn Again friends? After deep thought and reflection, we felt what better way to spread smiles than with a 30% discount off all current Worn Again Eurostar products and a chance to win a trip to gay Paris courtesy of Eurostar!
Enter the LETSGOTOPARIS discount code at checkout and you’ll get 30% off all in stock Eurostar products in our online shop until midnight of the 15th April 2010. Spread the word, tell your friends, family, work colleagues and grab a bargain while you still can. You’ll also be automatically entered into our competition for a fabulous trip for 2 to Paris via Eurostar. (Winner announced w/c... (read more)
We think it’s a big deal and WIRED agree because it’s the worlds first upcycled Train Managers bag. The bag has been made from Eurostars decommissioned staff uniforms and seats with award winning Designer Benjamin Shine, for train managers traveling between London, Paris and Brussels.
The project is part of Worn Again’s long term commitment to reinvigorate UK remanufacturing, RE:Made in UK, and divert unnecessary waste from landfill. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and let you know when you can see the bag in action on the Eurostar trains.
Last week we spent a lovely day at the DEFRA Sustainable Clothing Roadmap conference, interspersed with champagne lunch at London Fashion Week, then party central in the evening. It was a brilliant mix of celebration, fun and very serious sustainability work. The growing presence of Estethica and the sustainability brands at LFW is awesome to see and our factory collaborators Filippo and Orsela from From Somewhere, as usual did a brilliant job. Highlights of the day included a presentation from a Dutch consortium showing off a brilliant new machine to both separate waste textile and create new thread, even in short fiber denim. This prompted the man from Tesco to say, ’we’ll buy that from you tomorrow’! Unfortunately the machine isn’t quite ready yet but will be later this year so look out for organic/reuse mixed cotton jeans in your local superstore soon.
Apart from missing you all, we’ve been manic busy at Worn Again HQ. We’re about to announce a new collaboration which will be featured in Wired Magazine – out on March 4th!
In other news, we’ve just started working with Royal Mail on an exciting new pilot project. And we hope to be able to announce another major corporate partnership shortly, which we’re really excited about.
We’ve also been working with award winning designer, Benjamin Shine plotting and planning a process for taking upcycling to a whole new level.
We’ve also just rescued a previous Merrill Lynch banker from a life of suits and morally bankrupt (but extraordinarily well paid) activities, redirecting his astute financial acumen from evil to good, as Worn Again’s new finance director. Welcome aboard Simon.
Sorry for radio silence, but it’s all hands to the pump at Worn Again HQ. Promise to send more... (read more)
Because nobody needs a single glove, Green Thing presents . . . single gloves rescued by people across the country, washed, paired and sold in gloriously sustainable Glove Love. Watch Glove Story narrated by Emma Thompson, see the Lauren Budd In Glove Love photos, see the moving Lonely Glove pictures and, for a mere £5, get yourself some Glove Love
See Sir Richard himself flying the flag in his very own Worn Again Red Hot Air jacket.
Red Hot Air is a water-resistant, handmade unisex hoody with pockets and a wide hood. It has been made from retired Virgin hot air balloon, G-TVBF ‘Tango’. It did almost 500 flights over the rolling hills of Shropshire, England, carrying 7808 people. See how the balloon turned into these products here.
Available now in the Worn Again Store at £82.75 [excl VAT & Shipping]
The last ever pair of Worn Again trainers are going on auction via ebay today.
Yes, from the early days when Worn Again shoes were made in China, to the transition period where we pitched our production tent in Portugal, to today. Worn Again has now succeeded in landing its operations whole-heartedly in the UK.
The shoes are all gone now, apart from one final pair! And it’s available via auction today on ebay today. , starting at £5.99!
So we’re on the scout for the luckiest pair of size 8 feet. If you or anyone you know – dad, brother, boyfriend, husband, dentist -has a pair of size 8 men’s feet, you or they could own a piece of Worn Again history.
Get your bid in today. Auction ends 02 Oct, 2009 at 11:50:59 BST
We’re in the process of setting up a payment gateway on the site, so we’ll be able to accept a number of credit cards through the site in addition to Paypal.
With just a week away from launching our Bon Voyage collection of outerwear, bags and accessories made from decommissioned Eurostar uniforms and Virgin hot air balloons, we’re very excited. It has been a long road building a supply chain based entirely in the UK, for a next to non-existent industry (upcycling). And, during a recession.
One of our key challenges has been around pricing our products. There is a common misconception that products made from recycled materials should somehow be cheaper. This is not the reality.
For the past few years, Worn Again products have been available at a number of retailers, including Terra Plana, John Lewis and various independent shops around the world – in Japan, Scandinavia, the US and Europe.
We have sold our products using a conventional wholesale model where the retailer buys stock from us at a price that includes cost of goods and a margin... (read more)
If you’ve been reading previous posts, you’ll be aware that Worn Again has set out the ambitious vision of encouraging a shift in manufacturing back to the UK by moving our own production close to home after producing in China and then Portugal.
After an enlightening journey visiting what used to be a thriving hub of manufacturing in the UK, in Manchester and Coventry, I’m left musing the following and pondering solutions…
Fact number one. ‘Upcycling’, or making new products out of disused materials costs more than using conventional textiles. Normally the fabric required for a product would arrive at the factory on neat and orderly rolls. These rolls would simply get unravelled and stacked into tidy layers and then uniformly chopped into the necessary shapes to be mass produced/ sewn into lots of lovely homogeneous products.
To upcycle a new bag out of what used to be a train... (read more)
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