Bee & Alpaca: Designing with fashion's waste in mind

Cleaning up fashion’s fabric waste is no easy task, but we have to start somewhere if fashion is ever to become sustainable. Enter womenswear brand Bee & Alpaca, who aim to turn fast fashion’s pollution into beautiful, fun and unique clothing.

As the industry searches for solutions towards a circular fashion economy, we can no longer continue to ignore the growing issue of material thrown away in textile factories. A figure from 2020 suggests $120 billion worth of unused materials are thrown into landfills, burned, or laid to rest in warehouses every single year - not only a missed business opportunity, but a major sustainability concern.

Recognizing the importance of saving this material is what inspired the brand’s founders to start designing clothes from fashion’s leftovers and educating consumers on the relatively unknown issue. Their core value is that ‘no material can be more sustainable than those already produced’, and they’re committed to saving as many tons of textiles from landfill as they can regardless of small imperfections or tricky design logistics.

In an effort to learn more about their sustainability strategy and future plans, we spoke to Bee & Alpaca’s co-founder Deniz.

How did Bee & Alpaca first come about? What problem were you trying to solve?

We were first awakened to the mountains of fabric waste fashion creates when walking through a textile factory a few years ago. It seemed ridiculous to see whole rolls of fabric tossed aside and labelled as deadstock just because it was dyed the wrong shade, had a slightly different texture or had a few small imperfections, even though it was still perfectly usable. This was the most exasperating fact of all since fabric can be labelled as deadstock due to minor quality problems - which in many cases are acceptable to customers - but don’t meet exact purchasing or manufacturing order criteria. It’s beyond wasteful.

We work with a small number of suppliers, many of which suffered from cancellations during the pandemic and found themselves with mounting stock levels and no alternatives other than waste. This was during the initial planning stages of the business, and knowing that so much fabric was most likely going to be thrown away strengthened my resolve to find a solution. Even now many of these factories are still struggling with their recycling capacity and waste management, so we continue to have a positive impact.

How does designing with deadstock impact the brand’s creative process?

We always design with waste in mind, and the fabric itself often plays a huge part in our inspiration. Often we find a few minor issues on the fabric that are acceptable to consumers but not brands, like colour imperfections, or small marks that might be easily hidden, but a big brand doesn’t want to bother with them.

Because we’re starting with someone else’s fabric rather than a blank canvas, it forces us to be as creative as possible to make it work. Back at our atelier, our team will assess any imperfections and design around them - often influencing the final look of the garment - and create something completely unique.

I’ve always been very involved in hand-selecting the deadstock we use, and I often have to make a judgement call as to whether we can work with fabric and cover up any small misprints or other issues. It can be a challenging job, but it’s never boring and I always feel proud when we’ve saved something from landfill, even if it’s in small batches.

Why is transparency so important to you?

Transparency is the foundation of sustainability, and integral to our work and values. We aim to be as honest as possible with customers, and that includes discussing the pros and cons of using excess material, which can be seen as controversial, and being very clear about what we define as deadstock. We publish information about our suppliers, design process, packaging, emissions and more on our brand page.

We hope to take our passion for transparency further in the future by introducing annual Impact Reports as soon as possible.

What was your biggest concern when starting the brand? What hardships have you faced since then?

We’re one of the few that actually cares about making a positive impact on the world, and it can be a challenging line to walk between profits and the environment. We have chosen to go against the mainstream fashion industry in many ways - foregoing cheap fabric in favour of fashion’s deadstock, choosing to release smaller collections, promising carbon neutrality etc. - but it’s also exciting to work for what you believe in.

It can be a challenge leaving the factory at the end of a visit, knowing we have enough fabric for the next piece but also that we’re leaving behind more saveable stock than we’re taking. As a small business, it isn’t possible for us to hold on to masses of extra fabric and we have to be content with the material we did save.

On the other side, we sometimes find fabric that at first glance seems saveable, but come to find out in the atelier that there are one too many issues and the design is scrapped. We save more than we discard, however, so it’s still a win.

Aside from using deadstock, what sustainability initiative are you most proud of?

We aim to minimise waste in all aspects of our business, not just our fabric sourcing - which includes the design process. Having multiple design cycles with many small alterations and fittings can create a lot of undisclosed waste, so we aim to reduce our impact by avoiding excessive changes.

We cut down on unnecessary waste by restricting samples to a single prototype of one colour and size with minimal revisions. Further, once the process is over any failed prototypes are donated to members of the team or their family members - nothing is discarded.