// Asos launches first circular fashion collection following collaboration with Centre for Sustainable Fashion
// It features 29 trend-led clothing & accessory items designed with sustainable, circularity principles
Asos has launched its first circular fashion collection with a 29-piece range that adheres to eight principles on sustainability.
The new range is designed by an in-house design team, and follows Asos’ commitment at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit in 2018 to train all its designers on circular design by 2020.
Since the summit two years ago, Asos created and launched an educational programme with the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion, UAL, which has since been rolled out to all its designers.
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The online fashion retailer is also a participant in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular initiative, which drives collaboration between industry leaders and other key stakeholders to create a textiles economy fit for the 21st century.
The changes mean Asos will now launch its 29-piece women’s and menswear collection on September 28.
To create the collection, Asos defined eight bespoke design principles:
- Zero-waste design: Using zero-waste design pattern cutting methods to ensure we’re using all the fabric in the most efficient way as possible, so nothing goes to waste.
- Minimised waste: Using design methods and manufacturing techniques that minimise waste.
- Recycled input: Selecting materials with a recycled input to lower the impact of our materials and to drive uptake of recycled materials within the fashion industry
- Durability: Selecting materials and using construction methods that will allow the product to endure wear and care, so you can love your products for longer.
- Versatility: Designing products that can adapt to trend and purpose and can be styled in multiple ways.
- Mono-material: Using the same recyclable material throughout the product. This means designing the product so that its main fabrications can be easily recycled when you’re done with it.
- Disassembly: Designing products that can be easily taken apart at the end of their life, which makes it easier to reuse or recycle.
- Upcycle: Using design techniques and product modifications to remanufacture and upcycle something old into something new.
Asos saod each product in the new sustainable collection had to apply design principles that met a minimum of two of these foundations in order to be considered circular, to ensure they remain in use for as long as possible, can be re-used or re-purposed at the end of their lifespan, and create minimal waste.
Each product will also feature a QR code on its garment tag, which customers can scan to visit and learn more about our circular design principles and how the product was made.
“What this collection shows is that you don’t need to make a choice between the circular economy and fashion, and that you can make sustainable products without compromising on design or on price,” Asos head of design Vanessa Spence said.
“With all of our designers now trained in circular principles and our first circular collection out the door, we’re excited to see how we can take this project forward and use our size and scale to share our expertise with our suppliers but also other brands and retailers.”
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