Commitment
The global fashion industry makes between 80 and 150 billion garments a year, while one garbage trucks’ worth of clothes is thrown away every second. This waste problem is, of course, catastrophic for the environment, but it’s also an opportunity for bold new ideas. Recoded™ is a step towards a more circular and traceable fashion industry; it’s an experiment in traceability, which hand-picks garments from the past, updates them for the present, and enriches the experience of their future owners.
On the surface, Recoded™ is a upcycling program, where scalable quantities of vintage staples are updated and reworked for the modern man, or woman. But the platform proposes a much bigger vision: a QR-enabled unique serial number anchors digital data directly to each piece, which when scanned, provides open-source content on each piece’s provenance, material composition, and care instructions. And beyond this the digitalized services permit to enchance the full product life cycle. The tag is washable and built to last, and empowers owners to have a deeper, more intimate relationship with each piece. We want to encourage true ownership, by giving fashion lovers permanent, transparent information on their purchases long after they leave the store.
As the first step of the Recoded™, the founder Tuomas Merikoski has piloted this ambitious service for his eponymous brand Aalto International, and now as the second step, offers it as a service to all the other fashoin industry stakeholders. The product catalogue is already vast but inherently customizable, and has scoured the world for shirting, workwear, denim, jersey and silk squares. These heirlooms are mass-produced by industrials to serve a functional and rather classical purpose, and by reworking them for modern tastes, the Recoded™ solution pays tribute to the authentic fashion culture and their natural, never-out-trend materials. Every piece in the Recoded™ collection is unique, marked by the always unique defining ‘Unica Semper’ slogan stamp printed.
Recoded™ is grounded in the belief that when it comes to fashion’s impact on the planet, there is no black or white, only shades of grey. There is no such thing as a “good” or a “bad” material: each and every fabric used in garment production is inherently problematic. What we proudly stand behind is the principle of post-consumer material reuse or recycling: we believe every fashion brand has a responsibility to use as few virgin materials as possible.
In this age of disposable, throwaway fashion, It is clear that we desperately need a better way of engaging with clothes. As a industry stakeholder, we are part of the problem, but we can use our platform to drive positive change throughout the industry, by minimizing waste, regenerating garments, and bringing value back to the lifecycle long customer experience. Recoded™ is about returning to the values that fashion is grounded in: to craft beautiful pieces that will last a lifetime. We are taking a step back in time, to resurrect vintage pieces that still have a place in wardrobes today, so that we can take a step forward to a more transparent and circular fashion industry.