How Upcycled Fashion Platform Alterist is Disrupting The Fashion WORLD

Alterist's co-founders, Hannah Standen (center left) and Martina Sorghi (center right) - credit: LFW Victoria Beckham by Ben Darlington

Alterist is about Altering the world's perception of fashion and what is considered to be textile waste, challenging the social norms, being experimental and creative. With a mission to reduce textile waste, Alterist Marketplace along with its community of 68 designers showcases over 500 unique one of a kind upcycled garments. Co-founder Hannah Standen and Martina Sorghi both explain “We want Alterist to be the catalyst for change within the fashion industry, giving people the power to make more sustainable choices. We see upcycling as a way to create one of a kind, iconic pieces while also keeping these materials out of landfill.”

In late 2022 I had a chance to interview Martina and Hannah on why upcycling can lead the change in revolutionising the fashion industry.

GW: My first question for you Hannah and Martina, what's the story behind Alterist?

HS: Marty and I met with an activist background, and both of us were quite disillusioned with the industry and exploitation of human rights, the overproduction and sustainability issues. Through our work, we met designers who are working within the upcycling space, and we met a lot of consumers who were disillusioned and are looking for alternatives.

We wanted to create a solution that catered to everyone, and we came together and thought about what we could do. We thought that upcycling was the best as it's got a minimal impact on the environment, it's like a phoenix from the ashes, a way to create from waste, but to create something beautiful out of it. For designers working in this field, it takes so much creativity to pull apart something that was considered a waste material and reimagine it into a new product.

We saw upcycling as this beautiful way to participate in the world of fashion, but of guilt free and through a more sustainable lens. We decided to create a marketplace and a space for all these designers. It was born out of our own personal frustrations and the passion to do something within the fashion space that was creating good.

Alterist Marketplace - The Home Of Upcycled fashion

GW: Amazing! What about you Martina? Is there anything you'd like to add?

MS: Bringing back the act of the history of the garment and up-cycling, might be considered new now, however, it's something that human beings always did it in the past as a way of passing historical goods among generations. It was also a way in the past try to keep alive historic value through the history of the human being.

GW: And I guess within that, your mission is strong. So, could you tell me a bit more about your mission? I know that you talk about reducing textile waste and really fuelling this circular economy, that maybe you could tell me more about your mission in terms of this amazing juncture of creativity and circular economy, that there's just so much that you're doing and bringing together through the Alterist platform. In a nutshell, if you had to do the elevator pitch, what’s your mission?

HS: Our mission is to reduce textile waste, we are a marketplace that unites a community of upcycling designers using creativity to drive change, transform fashion, culture, and make a positive impact on our planet.

Our vision is to be at the forefront of the upcycling movement, and through creativity, collaboration, and design, to revolutionize the fashion industry attitude to textile waste.

We want to make upcycling mainstream and to elevate it to show people the power, the creativity and the beautiful in reusing materials. As Marty said, it has been used throughout history. We need to go back to certain historical ways to make the planet more sustainable, there is so much material in this planet. It’s around 100 billion pieces of material being produced each year and only 1% of it is recycled. We want to encourage people to use alternative ways to live but also to not give up on certain things, everyone wants to look nice and to wear cool car garments and we want to find an alternative way to do that in a way that doesn't particularly harm the planet.

MS: It's also related to the fact that everything started out of our personal frustration and the will to offer a solution to people, because there is plenty of people that are ready to change, but they don't really know where to start and they don't know how to do it. It’s trying to let them know that there is a solution and trying to place Alterist in ourselves in this side of the world, where we are trying to think of alternative way of doing things.

We are trying to offer an alternative to the current fashion industry system, how consumers shop, why they shop, and it is really trying to merge all these together to give life to something else.

GW: I love that! I know that in the activist world, even with the greatest intention, sometimes, either the change requested is too radical for the mainstream, or in a way, it's too abstract people are not given enough easy access to make a change it’s almost like, ‘give me the QR code with the downloadable letter that I can send to my MP’.

You are trying to bridge these activist ideas into how it can manifest in a very common action, like purchasing a garment. Even if we want fashion to change, we can turn the faucet off all the creativity of the designers who want to create fashion.

Some figures show that we have enough existing stock to manufactur for the next 7 years clothing for the entire world. We have all the materials like ones that are sitting in stock. I think it is so important to bridge these activist ideas with the concerns of real-life people who don't necessarily know as much about sustainability.

HS: Definitely! people tend to get disengaged when they talk about the issues of the fashion industry. If they pay attention, then they can't buy something new for the weekend or have a wedding and feel guilty about buying a dress to wear to the wedding or they want to buy something secondhand. You can't always find exactly what you're looking for. Sometimes people tend to disengage then face the realities of how bad the fashion industry is for the environment. I understand that people want to wear something nice. We just wanted to make an alternative where people could participate without feeling this overwhelming guilt. I think it's become so evident recently with the news on how much we talk about sustainability in the fashion industry and human rights, especially over COVID.

We just wanted to create a platform that let people participate in fashion, but not especially those who've been so disillusioned, it is a hard line to balance and for people who are worried about these kinds of issues, and we wanted to make a space for them.

GW: How has this manifested? What about the human experience you've created? Could you tell us more about the transformation that you see with people who use us up-cycled clothing, especially the personal experience?

HS: I think Marty would be best to chat about this, she's very much been building the community and we have about 70 designers on the platform and got a lot more than applied. I'll let Marty talk about her experience chatting with the designers.

GW: If I may add, it might be also interesting to know if you have any feedback from users, not just the designers, but the end users?

MS: I can try to cover a bit of both in the sense that we just launched last week. This year and a half of preparation for the launch, I've been able to have the chance of doing a few lectures at universities, Where students were studying a mixture of courses including business studies fashion related subjects.

What I found from the consumers' perspective is a lack of information related to the fashion industry in general. everyone is buying fashion, everyone is wearing clothes, they have a lack of information related to that, even the fact that one t-shirt is taking 10,000-20,000 litres of water, that for us is common now and people are surprised by this. it's interesting to see when people are informed, start to get closer to this idea of upcycling or second hand and you can tell that they are interested, and they start to choose differently.

For the designer, it’s still beautiful because there are all different people and especially, we have more than 15 countries and designers are all coming from around Europe and UK. It's about people with different cultural backgrounds and ages, however, the experiences these creatives had in the fashion industry were shown to be frustrated with how the whole system is working.

The marketing aspect of fashion was into the creation in any kind of area, they were working in fashion, and there was something that wasn't making them feel good and it's very important to like to feel good about what you're doing. That's why we related to our values, like where we say care is like, because it is important, you need to care about that’s why we are offering them a platform like Alterist.

What they like is this aspect of community where they are a feeling part of something even if maybe they don't know each other, they know that there is someone else that is supporting them, and this is great for them. Also, they see the platform as a way of supporting them in their work for instance, on other platforms such as Depop, upcycled fashion is usually a little bit undervalued because it got lost with other kinds of fashion and you can't highlight the work that is behind the garment between the worker and the artist, in the case of fashion.

HS: To elaborate a bit on what Marty said, it takes a lot of time to see material and to deconstruct a garment and then to recreate it or some designers find a pair of jeans and rework that into a jacket, or they might find an old basketball and turn that into a bag. In other kinds of platforms, there hasn't been something that caters to upcycling and everything's one of a kind, it can't be through traditional channels, because in brick-and-mortar stores, they tend to want 50 of the exact same garments or in secondhand shops, they are catering to second hand.

We really wanted to create a place for up-cycling, and something that highlights the work that goes into deconstructing and reconstructing and reimagining materials by seeing the beauty in that. Just because these are alternative materials doesn't mean they're of less value it takes a lot of time on each product, there is a counter, and we asked the designers to say how long it took to make each garment.

You can see one massive thing is that fashion prices have continued to rise, however, companies tend to find a cheaper way to support labour. We are really going against that by supporting UK and EU designers and we want them all to get a working wage, we want you to know how much time and money is being spent and we want you know the backstory on where they found the materials and what their creative process is. Fashion can be an art and we want to showcase that with their work.

MS: Technically, to make a garment that is made from leftover materials, you need much more creativity to do that. It's not like going into the shop and deciding the fabric and colour. You need to do with what you already have.

It requires more creativity because it is not easy, maybe you have an idea in your mind, you want to do a certain garment, but then the material that you have available are different from the original idea, so you need to be flexible and adapt yourself and change your mind. It’s like testing the person, not like ‘I want this and I'm going to get it’, it’s more like, ‘let’s see what I have to do to arrive to the closest idea I want and let's see what is going to happen in the journey’. The final product is going to have this hidden history which is magical.

GW: As a former fashion designer, we always started with the materials and that is the first thing we looked at. Obviously, we worked on colour or things that are different because we could pick a material and request that it would come in this colour. However, when it comes to an existing garment you’re just switching your gaze to a different kind of raw material and letting it speak to you. That kind of resourcefulness is a skill that as designers we do have. With upcycling we need to flex it in a different way. I think it's great because you're creating a type of benchmark for the future and maybe this type of practice will become much more mandatory or more common.

GW: It kind of brings me to my next question, you've created a constellation, a type of community of designers and you're creating a platform where it's not just ‘this is a design’, you're like, ‘this is a design, this is the person behind it. These are the metrics behind what this clothing took to come to life and this the reality behind the garment and the story. On your website, you talked about how you wish to empower all of those you work with and create a space where people come together. I love how you talked about hope, creativity, the beauty, and impact of collective action. You have already talked about the community aspect, just out of curiosity, do you have ideas in the future of how that community might come together? The community is one thing existing on an online platform, is there a way that people will be able to share insights or support each other?

HS: Yes, we have so many ideas. We've had to stage out the development. We plan on this being an ever-evolving project and we want to do pop-up events where designers can come together and meet. We're in about 16 countries, so it's about being able to include all of them which will be in our future developments.

We're organising something in the future within London, that designers can be a part of and then once we are more established, we can go to Europe and organize campaigns and ways for them to collaborate as well.

I think it's important for us to continuously find new ways to evolve. One way we also want to do that is with our collaboration project in the future, where we kind of work with brands with excess stock and give them a medium to collaborate with designers. We have a million ideas and how it will continue to expand, but it's about taking kind of steps to do so.

GW: I was listening to a podcast yesterday by someone who's a successful and visionary entrepreneur. He mentions the best advice he has ever had is that there is never any lack of ideas, it is more about implementing and integrating them that he struggles with the most. He was talking about all these business ideas that he had to someone who is his mentor, and the feedback was, how do these serve you as a person and encouraged him to narrow it down and focus on the important things. I guess it's different with you because you're not a person. It's going to be exciting to see how you evolve.

HS: Yes, we have always had a big vision and you would need to be realistic and make an impact. Rather than spreading ourselves and doing a million things at once, we want to do each step well before we progress to the next. Now, we're really focused on building the community and getting upcycling into the forefront. Then we want to open into acquiring this excess material and becoming a holistic view of acquiring waste material and providing it to designers.

We are a team of two with a big vision, we must be realistic about how much impact we can make. Our focus is on building this community and bringing upcycling into the forefront.

GW: I am curious, do you feel that your experience as activists has also helped you manage your expectations? As activists we have big dreams, and we want to make an impact. I'm curious how your experiences as activists, the good and the bad, has helped you with this project?

HS: It has been in the way we approach things. You can see the wave of activism through all our messaging. The fact that we haven't taken a different standpoint. What we are not willing to compromise on and the way that we view the world. For that reason, a lot of the designers probably resonate with us because we are coming from a good place.

We're starting this business with a real message and purpose. We truly believe in what we're doing, I think that kind of activism is woven through the business and that is why people resonate with us.

MS: It's always interesting to see because we found a brand-new business during a pandemic with Brexit happening in the UK. We are Italian and Australian living in the UK, which is a unique situation. We talk about different ways of doing things like switching and slowing down our life and changing the way we do things. It's interesting to see how we're doing, like trying to set up a business in this situation. However, trying to bring in the business is something that is not fitting with activism, but we are trying to bring a new vision to the business driven by the values and the quality rather than quantity. It's harder because it's not easy, because as two female co-founders we encounter not very beautiful situations, like comments from people asking us to wear makeup because that’s how you should present yourself or being called the girls because yes, we are girls. Yes, we are women, and we might look younger, but it doesn't take anything from the fact that we have a business.

HS: Also, people telling us how to run the business in a way that is not authentically us. We appreciate input from a capitalist perspective, but that is not why we are in this. It's about staying authentically to our values which sometimes may be a conflicting thing when you're in accelerated programs and you've got mentors who have built businesses, they may see things that we don't particularly agree with because what we are essentially doing is trying to create a difference.

GW: It's under-estimating your experience, your strategic experience to create activations and all that stuff requires a lot of ability to plan, promote and create an impact, which are ingredients of running a business. Both of you were implicated in the roles in these activist organizations, and you made quite an impact. You are already running a business but being an activist and being part of an organisation planning, to show up on the street coordinating and marketing it for impact, that's what we do when we run a business.

MS: We are still activists, it’s just that we are strategically doing it in a different way.

HS: Something that we very much stand by is fashion is culture. We see Alterist as a vehicle to make an impact, to change perceptions and to use the power of fashion and creativity to make this impact to change perception.

Activism is woven within the way we are doing it. We're just taking a different approach from organising actions on the street to being within the industry and still trying to kind of delivered the same message.

GW: That quote on your website, ‘Fashion is culture,’ resonated with me because for a moment, that was something I kept saying when I was on panels and I would say we need to reclaim the culture of fashion, it is not reflective of the true culture of fashion. It's about changing and reclaiming the history and creativity and bringing it back.

HS: Fashion is an incredible vehicle for activism. You have the Black Panthers, the Women's Liberation Movement, Punk Fashion, and it's so woven within activism. It really has this power to make a statement. Hopefully we can use that within altruist as well. There are incredible designers who make such powerful statements with their work and it's an art, a statement and it is powerful. We are just really hoping to highlight that.

GW: My next questions were about circular fashion. I was wondering if you see any like cultural or business blockers towards this. I recently moderated a panel on circularity and fashion. In my time as a forecaster and designer how that is really accelerating, in terms of the innovations and the systems being put in place to enable a circular system. What are you expecting, as part of your business plan?

HS: There needs to be other sustainable businesses in this space. We are not expecting to solve all the issues in the fashion industry, we have one vehicle that is driving change. One massive blocker is the fact that people have become accustomed to getting fashion at an insanely cheap price, which they don't think about the cost of the raw materials and what goes into paying the workers who make them.

It's about changing attitudes to pay a fair wage for fashion, that is a massive thing that people must overcome. We are not a platform where you get your basic white t shirt, we are a platform where you get your statement pieces. People are willing to understand the value of statement pieces that you're getting from Alterist, but I see that as being a major issue in circularity. It's about changing attitudes and engaging with people by getting them to understand and to care about where their clothes come from, who made their clothes, what their impact of the clothes are. For some people, they don't particularly want to engage in that. This is a major issue to overcome.

MS: There is also the issue of the fast part of trends that are changing every season and its fashion in general. We are used to changing our style and our look every three months.

When we say, ‘eco over ego’ it's driven by the ego of people, and I think it is also related to social media where it's about visual appearance and you need be like everyone which is not psychologically good.

The fact that the business models of the industry brands are set to produce in big quantities. That is a massive problem for the resources of the planet because they usually like to use brand new materials like cotton, silver minerals, gold, and oil. Everyone is using it because we all work closer, whether it is your culture. It is a really a bigger conversation.

GW: The Strategist in America asked me to send recommendations for a holiday shopping edit. This year the question was, “What do you see the big new trend?” I responded by saying, there is no big new trend, anyone telling you there's a big new trend is lying to you. People are exhausted by the face of trends. To finish up, my last two questions were about care, because you talk about that as one of your cornerstones, but also about how you see the future?

HS: Our ideal future is to educate more consumers, so they care about the impact of their clothes and to care about where they come from, to value the designs of the clothing.

On the designer side, to continue to build a community, there are more and more designers who are turning to upcycling and are turning to alternative methods. The more involved you are within the fashion industry, the more aware you are to certain aspects of its unsustainable practices. We just want to continue to grow and to make a big impact as we possibly can and to change habits. We are one drop in the ocean of a massive issue. if we can even turn this into a positive solution for this fashion crisis, we will be happy with that. We have this big vision to continue to tackle this crisis.

MS: A community that is made of lots of people like you is the perfect place where you can get new ideas because we don't know in five years where we're going to be and what the world is going to be like. We can have an idea, but we don't know what is going to happen and having more people united by the same values we can aim together. It means that you have more chances to have bigger visions and have more ideas and try to make something that can switch people’s way of thinking.

In Italy, we say ‘unione fa la forza. I think that is also very important and really connects to the community aspect

You can find the Alterist platform and marketplace here:

Website: www.alterist.com
Instagram: alteristmarketplace
Linkedin: LinkedIn

interview, fashion, circular design, craftivism, sustainability, upcycling, GW5Geraldine Wharry16 January 2023design, sustainability, fashion, materials, upcycling