Reet Aus makes new clothes collection of Bangladeshi leftovers

Photo: Jelena Rudi

At Estonian Design House yesterday, fashion designer Reet Aus showed her new innovative collection made of Bangladeshi mass production leftovers. Following presentation, some items will go on sale on the spot.

According to Ms Aus, the novel method is great for environment, saving a whopping 65 per cent on water and energy.

For her, the new collection also happens to be a follow-up study for her doctoral thesis in Estonian Academy of Arts, two years back, named Trash to Trend – Upcycling in Fashion Design.

«Beximco, largest Bangladeshi fabric and clothes producer, has so far failed to find proper use for their material leftovers, a side effect from producing 56 million items a year. We now claim to have come up with an innovative solution for use production leftovers within the industry. And we really did enjoy working with Beximco,» said Ms Aus. «We used four kinds of textile leftovers: cutout strips, fabric roll endings, defective fabrics and excess produce. A large share of our material came from a huge heap headed for rubbish dump.»

According to Ms Aus, large scale mass production was no shock to her – this not being her first such contact, either. «Nothing surprised me, really. Over here [in Estonia], mass production is just non-existent. So, there’s no such amount of excess production. Here, the chief wasters are consumers...,» Ms Aus pointed out.