AFORE AFTER was founded on circularity. It’s right there in our name because we’re guided by our product origin (AFORE), and its future (AFTER). We don’t claim perfection, our mission is to continue to make progress by doing more with less.
Circular fashion provides an alternative to a traditional linear economy of make, use, waste. The circular economy keeps resources in use for as long as possible, extracts the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recovers and regenerates products and materials at the end of their use. While the fashion industry’s use of sustainable and recycled materials has grown in recent years, this is still closer to a linear model than a circular one.
To become circular, fundamental changes are needed in three key areas:At AFORE AFTER we work in a more responsible, less wasteful, circular system. We’re creating fashion to be looked after, valued, worn and kept in use for the longest possible time. During our extensive and ongoing research, we consider the way clothing is designed, what materials are used, how it's manufactured, how it's transported, how quickly we are consuming and discarding our clothes, how we look after our clothes, and what happens when we dispose of them.
As a circular fashion brand, we have given careful consideration to how we rethink, reduce, rewear, resell, recover and regenerate the products we create at AFORE AFTER.
We recognize that the biggest circular impacts can be made at the first stage of design. In 2022, while still in our first year of business, we reached a major milestone that allows us to rethink our fashion design methods. Following years of research, we developed a mono-material system for clothing using only circular, regenerative and biodegradable certified raw materials. In our circular design process, we remove all technical necessity for polyester and plastic materials, to reduce the resources needed for our products and maximise their recyclability. Furthermore, we effectively design a multiform and adjustable use for each product to assure a longer lifespan, offering several options to rewear each piece time and time again.
We not only design our garments responsibly to offer several options for rewear, but we will also assure they can be used and effectively circulated in their most valuable form for as long as possible. This will be achieved by providing a resell service from our website called Full Circle, which will allow you to minimise the environmental impact of your fashion choices. However, it is most notable that our garments are designed for a closed-loop product lifecycle, so they can be truly recycled when they’re no longer fit to wear.
With our mono-material system, we are incredibly proud that our products are manufactured to be remade into new designs in the future. We’re exploring partnerships in closed-loop textile recycling, which will allow us to recover our materials and regenerate them into new textiles. Textile-to-textile recycling is still new, with limited availability, so we expect it will take some time before we have this in place. However, our circular designs mean their end-of-life recycling needs are thankfully in the distant future, giving us ample time to secure the right recycling partner for our business. Our partnership with digital fashion platform MYAVA introduces a groundbreaking new function, inviting you to try on our collection pieces via a personal avatar before you buy. But it’s not just a virtual try-on solution to make online shopping more convenient. More importantly, it helps customers shop mindfully and sustainably from home and reduce the enormous amount of waste that’s typically generated by online shopping returns.
