Our story

Reet Aus, PhD, is a sustainable fashion designer and ardent visionary who devised industrial upcycling principles that reduce the fashion industry’s impact on environment by circulating fabrics leftover from mass production back into production using the design.

We do it by industrial upcycling. This means producing clothing from pre-production leftover fabrics.

The beginning of our story has been recorded by Jaak Kilmi and Lennart Laberenz who produced the documentary "Out Of Fashion" about Reet and her plan to change the world, by changing the fashion industry.

The documentary follows Reet’s journey from Tallinn, through the fashion stages of Europe and the cotton plantations of South America, and right into the epicentre of mass production in Bangladesh, in an attempt to effect real change to benefit everyone.

Jaak and Reet are currently shooting their second documentary “Completely out of Fashion”. 

Why and how we do it?

In mass production an average of 18% of new fabrics after cutting are considered pre-consumer waste and meet their end in landfills. 

and ardent visionary who devised industrial upcycling principles that reduce the fashion industry’s impact on environment by circulating fabrics leftover from mass production back into production using the design.

The fact that no extra fabric is produced for us makes our clothes carbon neutral. Moreover, as the fabric we use is virgin, we make sure that the leftover fabric does not contain harmful chemicals and that production is socially responsible, meets workplace safety requirements, and does not use child labor of course.

This radically not-wasteful new way of production model is based on a scientific core methodology called UPMADE®.

It has been developed by our designer and founder PhD Reet Aus in cooperation with Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Center. This methodology is applied when producing clothing for the trademark of Reet Aus and other brands in factories we certify.

Making of up-shirt

THE IMPACT

Reet Aus garments tell the story about

  • quality and sustainability - the garments are built to last both physically and style-wise
  • clean environment - each UPMADE certified garment saves on average 75% water, 88% energy and emits 80% less CO2 compared to mass production
  • transparency in production – our production facilities meet safety and fair pay standards according to Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and International Labour Organisation (ILO)
  • UPMADE® certification