Berlin upcycling label breathes new life into old clothes

The young upcycling label Avenir has big plans: After the successful foundation at the beginning of the Corona pandemic, the Berlin brand wants to bring its made-to-order designs into stationary retail.

Fast, cheap and in large quantities. This is how the shopping behavior of the majority of people can be described: after a season, clothing that has been bought carelessly and cheaply is sorted out and replaced by new, more trend-oriented models – a development that leads to vast amounts of textile waste. According to the Fashion Waste Index Europe, around 392,000 tons of textiles were thrown away in Germany alone in 2020.

The Berlin upcycling label Avenir wants to counteract exactly this fast pace. The central concept of the brand is recycling. “Upcycling works in so many different ways,” says founder Sophie Claussen in an interview with FashionUnited. She describes her own approach as quite simple: Avenir uses old clothing or textiles and leftover fabrics and uses them to make new products, the label only makes to order.

The young label has its small studio hidden between an allotment garden and numerous car repair shops on Blaschkoallee in Berlin’s Neukölln district. The founder works with her team of five in an inconspicuous red house with old wooden window shutters. A loving, creative chaos reigns in the two rooms. Between mountains of leftover denim, mood boards and samples, the new spring/summer collection is in the final stages of completion. This collection also bears the characteristic signature of the label: the designs have a straight cut and are not waisted. Patchwork and denim are the main design elements and can be found on trousers and jackets. But a shirt made from old tablecloths also hangs on the clothes rail.

From the pandemic to the red carpet

Avenir means future in French – Claussen founded the label in January 2020, having previously worked as a junior designer at Rejina Pyo in London. She had had the desire to found a company for a long time. “For me, the desire was specifically paired with the idea of ​​making something sustainable, making it better,” she says. After her time in London, she worked at Textilhafen, the material pool of the Berlin City Mission, where around eleven tons of donated clothing arrive every week. There she saw how much surplus textile material is in circulation: “And from this idea that there is so much textile waste that still has a nice use if you approach it right, Avenir was born”.

The start-up phase of the young label correlated with the beginning of the corona pandemic, which meant that the founding year was different than planned. Traveling was unthinkable and cultural events were put on hold – visiting producers was impossible and creative exchange and contact with customers was severely restricted. Looking back, Claussen describes it as slow progress: They developed the lettering for the logo, started the production and sale of fabric masks and learned the basics of sales. In retrospect, it was quite pleasant for the label, “because the initial pressure was gone,” says Claussen.

Avenir gets most of the materials from the Berlin Textilhafen, mostly denim. The remaining fabrics are sourced in different ways from various wholesalers who specialize in leftovers. The made-to-order orders are handmade in Berlin and make up the majority of the business. The products can be ordered online, the sizes range from S to XL, individual customizations are also possible. After the order has been received, the Avenir team gets to work. Due to the limited selection of fabrics and the fact that they are sewn by hand, they are all unique pieces.

In addition, the label has a number of factories in Portugal that have integrated remaining stock fabrics into their production chain and offer them, explains the founder. There, the brand produces a few models, such as a plain white T-shirt made from recycled cotton, in small series that are offered alongside the made-to-order designs.

Due to recycling and the associated limited selection of fabrics, Avenir, like all upcycling labels, is limited in terms of order quantity and growth. By carrying well-performing models into new collections, where only the color palette changes, the team sees an opportunity to still grow and offer larger quantities. “Made-to-order will always remain a bit limited,” says Claussen, “we don’t think that’s a bad thing at all, because these products build an emotional bond with the customer.”

In February, the label presented its designs for the first time at Berlin Fashion Week, as part of the group exhibition Berliner Salon. The handmade denim puffer jacket presented by the brand at the exhibition was also worn at an event on the video platform by content creator Jacob Rott, who is followed by over eight million people on TikTok. Musician Lotte even brought Avenir to the red carpet: she showed up at the “New Faces Awards” in an all-over denim look from the label.

Upcycled fashion for brick-and-mortar stores

Avenir currently sells its products primarily through its own online shop, but also through other shopping platforms such as the Avocadostore or Entire Stories. Working with online marketplaces was exciting for Claussen because some platforms, such as Habitus, have included the made-to-order concept in their range: the best-selling model, the Sophie denim pants and a denim bomber jacket can be bought on the upcycling platform be ordered.

In the future, the brand wants to take the step into brick-and-mortar retail. “My favorite idea would be for us to offer brick-and-mortar retail a kind of concept that we’ve tried with our pop-up stores,” explains Claussen. With trained staff who offer the products and take measurements, made-to-order should be included in classic retail and offer a new shopping experience – always combined with a small series of “take-away” goods. “We noticed in our pop-ups that this works well,” says Claussen, “and the customers also liked it”.

For the future, the Avenir team wants to further develop its products, make upcycling easier and offer them as a holistic form for customers – for example by sending in old clothes or workshops. “We want to establish upcycling as something pleasant,” says the founder, “and of course also establish ourselves as a brand”.

In order for this project to be easier, according to Claussen, the fashion location Berlin must also develop further and position itself more broadly in terms of sustainability: “There are other locations that have great platforms and funding, such as Copenhagen, which simply network better and further”. But the Avenir founder remains optimistic. “Maybe we’ll find a few courageous buyers who will respond to our concept.”