Despite Hong Kong’s reputation for rampant consumerism, a nascent movement against fast fashion is taking root in the city, with clothes-mending workshops and pop-up swaps growing in popularity, and designers parading recycled fabrics on the catwalk.
From broken umbrellas to discarded curtains, no material is too shabby for designer Jesse Lee, who showcased his creations at a recent sustainable fashion show in Hong Kong.
Lee realized that humble household goods could be the springboard for creativity when his family was throwing out an old sofa.
Photo: AFP
He turned the sofa’s leather cover into a jacket and has since made clothes from old curtains and bed linen, as well as a raincoat using umbrella fabric.
Lee also tries to make his designs unisex and adjustable so they can be easily shared. “If you don’t feel like wearing this, you can give it to others and it doesn’t matter if it is a boy or a girl,” Lee said.
Global consumers purchased 60 percent more clothing in 2016 than in 2000 and only kept each item half as long, a report by McKinsey consultancy found.
Hong Kong alone sends 343 tonnes of textiles to the city’s overloaded landfills every day and a 2016 report by Greenpeace found a sixth of clothes owned by residents were seldom or never worn after purchase.
But Lee and others like him are hoping to capitalize on rising consumer awareness as shoppers become more conscious of the human and environmental cost of fast fashion after high-profile scandals like the deadly 2013 collapse of a building in Bangladesh that housed several garment factories.
The tragedy, one of the worst industrial accidents in modern history, sparked global outrage and triggered a drive among activists to encourage shoppers to buy from local stores, rather than from large multinational fast fashion brands.
Christina Dean, founder of Redress, says the tide is slowly turning and describes the industry as at a tipping point. The Hong Kong-based charity works to reduce fashion waste and hosted the recent show where Lee displayed his creations, alongside other designers who transformed vintage kimonos and bridalwear samples and even used silicone and rubber.
“Many people are turning their backs and saying ‘I have more clothes than I can possibly wear,” she said.
A STITCH IN TIME
Shocked by the volume of clothing and the pollution produced by major brands, Hong Kong designers Kay Wong and Toby Crispy founded “Fashion Clinic” to help people mend garments.
They set up pop-up stalls at clothing stores providing repair and reshaping services and also hold workshops teaching basic needlework.
“Fast fashion makes people dispose of their clothes so easily, because clothes are too cheap,” Wong said. “After they learn stitching, they can repair many things, like worn-out shirts or socks,” Wong said.
Jack Lam, 31, was learning to sew patches onto his torn jeans at a recent workshop, as curious shoppers looked on. “The patches look like new embellishments,” he said, adding that the jeans were now more valuable to him because he had fixed them himself.
SPINNING YARN
While repair clinics, clothes swaps and second-hand shops are all doing their bit, some want to address the waste problem on an industrial scale.
A cutting-edge “upcycling” spinning mill that turns discarded clothes into new yarns will this month go into full operation in the city, developed by the Hong Kong Research Institute for Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA).
The 1,765 square-metre factory will sterilize, sort and turn used textiles into fresh fiber, processing three tonnes of textile waste each day.
Six workers will remove zips and buttons and categorize the fabrics before machines carry out automated color sorting and re-spinning. Mixed-fiber clothing will go through a high-tech treatment to separate the different elements. Edwin Keh, CEO of HKRITA, said the recycled yarn will be “as good as virgin materials,” while the selling price will be 30 percent lower.
The factory launch comes as China moves to ban the import of most solid waste, including textile scraps, putting pressure on Hong Kong to find new ways to deal with its trash.
“Whereas China doesn’t want to import other people’s rubbish, they are very happy with importing yarns and fibers,” Keh said.
Keh hopes the new mill will serve as an inspiration for other cities. “If in a crowded city like Hong Kong we have come up with this solution to deal with our own waste, any city in the world should be able to have that kind of local solution.”
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
RSS