Over the next few weeks, I’m taking a look at circular fashion and how people are starting to shift their design thinking, and the consumer mindset to adapt to this new model. The next step in sustainable fashion is hacking circularity, taking the traditional “take, make, waste” model and closing the loop. How do we reverse the damage we’ve done and create garments out of discarded garments?
I talked with Carmen Gama, Designer of Eileen Fisher Renew, to hear about how they are stepping up as leaders in the industry to create a circular production model at their Tiny Factory. Carmen established RESEWN, a remanufacturing model so solve the company’s challenge of repurposing damaged inventory that they had been collecting since 2009.
The Tiny Factory, located on the Hudson in Irvington, New York, is pioneering the way for the industry to redefine its product lifecycle and production models. They’ve faced challenges along the way and are still developing ways to grow and scale their model to tackle all the inventory they have in stock but are finding innovative ways to overcome setbacks. Read more about Carmen’s work with the RESEWN program and the Tiny Factory in the interview below.
How did you first start the Eileen Fisher RESEWN program?
I started working with Eileen Fisher three years ago when I was a recently graduated student from Parsons. The CFDA partnered up with Eileen Fisher, along with two other students from Parsons, to figure out what to do with their damaged inventory they had been collecting from their take back program since 2009. We were trying to figure out how to make something profitable, beautiful and scalable. By repurposing just one garment at a time, changing a sleeve or fixing a button, we would not have been able to tackle the challenge the company was facing. We really focused in on developing systems and processes that were able to produce these garments.
At the end of the year we had a collection made of 500 units, and after Eileen saw our collection and our process she was really excited about our proposal to resolve this challenge. She asked us to continue, and I decided to stay and work on the project.
How did the Tiny Factory come into being?
While I was working on creating the systems for the RESEWN program, the manager who was guiding the project, Cynthia Power from Eileen Fisher, also had an idea of Eileen Fisher having their own factory here in Irvington. The factory didn’t start with the idea of making garments out of garments, but out of the idea of owning some of our Eileen Fisher production. So they opened the factory and at the same time, we were trying to scale our process. When it opened it was supposed to be 75% Eileen Fisher main collection and 25% Eileen Fisher RESEWN collections, and it started that way. Very quickly, Eileen decided to do only RESEWN because it was too expensive to do the main production in the facility.
What does the production process look like at the Tiny Factory?
Making garments out of garments requires different steps from regular production. First, you have to source the inventory that you need. Second, you have to deconstruct that garment. Third, you have to prep the materials on a table. You have to lay it all out to be ready for cutting. This is what we call our pre-production steps. It’s kind of like when designers place their fabric orders, or the colors of their yarn, you forget what happens on the other side of the world, people spinning and creating textiles. That is what those three steps are for us, we are prepping the garment to become raw material.
After those steps then it’s just regular production. We cut them and then we sew them, we have three factory sewers. They were hired initially with a very simple skill set, which was sewing basic pants, one of our viscose pants. But when they started doing our production, the skill set for making garments out of garments was a lot higher. We ended up having to train them because sometimes we had garments made from silk and other details. In the beginning, I was very much involved in every step from the sorting to the deconstructing, so it was not very economically sustainable. To solve this we cross-trained all of the sewers to not only to sit down at the sewing machine constructing the garments but also doing the other pre-production steps.
Has there ever been inventory that you’ve been stumped on what to do with? And how did you work around it?
Yeah, there’s a lot of them, but we have one, in particular, it’s a silk jersey. It’s a bread and butter fabric that we use every season. That fabric tends to stain in the same way, it’s this oily stain that is pretty consistent, but they’re everywhere in the garment. Sometimes you don’t even see it, but when you’re pressing them more stains come up. We actually did a production of them, it’s a beautiful shell. But as we were finishing production and we were steaming them to be ready to be packed to the store, stains were surfacing.
Now we’re working with one of our vendors that is doing fiber recycling with textiles to solve this problem. We told them to take the silk and experiment with it, that we would like to use it if they can shred it and turn it into a new textile. They were so excited, within a month they came back with a sample. Now those garments will be part of a new textile that we will be using for Spring 2019.
Do you work with the design team from the Eileen Fisher main line to talk about what fabrics are used designs are done in the main line?
I’m part of the circular by design team at Eileen Fisher, which is a team of people trying to make sense of circularity, how it works and what does it look like for Eileen Fisher. We have been thinking a lot about design for takeback. Eileen has essentially been doing this since day one since her designs have been so simple, so they actually provide a lot of material to work with.
Are you working with other brands to share what you’ve learned?
We opened our doors and share the story with anyone who is interested. It’s not only up to us to change this industry it’s up to everybody else. We were talking about sustainability, and now we’re talking about circularity and I think transparency is the next big thing that people are going to jump on board for. If these companies really want to see change in this industry, companies will have to be transparent in order to see change and we have to share how we’re doing it. We’re working on some collaborations with designers and companies like H&M have come to tour the facility. We open our doors to anybody. It doesn’t have to be the same model for everybody, but it’s about taking what we’re doing and applying it to your own needs.
How do you see this programming growing? What do you see for the future of the Tiny Factory?
Right now because of manpower there is a limit. I feel like our processes are there. We have processes that can replicate what we’re doing by the hundreds. The number of people who are working here is just not enough to do that. So far, every store would love to have our product. And I’d love to have more online, our product actually sells well online, our story is told better there.
My ideal shoot for the moon goal for the factory is that we can produce as fast as we are getting garments in. We will need a lot more people. I think our designs are there. Right now we’re at a bottleneck, we’re really drowning in garments. I would like to produce as fast as clothing is coming in.
—
Click here to shop Eileen Fisher RESEWN products