Verle Spaepen, inventing the Circular Economy of clothing

Clothing, under its current model of throw-away “fast fashion” is one of the most polluting and resource-intensive industries. The EDO collective in Antwerp promotes clothing that lasts long, is repairable and is made ethically.

… to educe the environmental and social impact of one of the most damaging industries

The clothing industry currently operates under a model of “fast fashion”, whereby collections are changed 6 to 8 times / year, clothes are cheap and short-lived. It typifies our linear, ‘throw away” economic model. It generates 20% of water pollution and more GHG emissions than international air transport and shipping combined. Working conditions can be disastrous, as exemplified by the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh in April 2013, which killed more than 1,000 workers.

Verle Spaepen, an entrepreneur in Antwerp (Belgium), dedicates herself to changing this model by proposing viable alternatives. Her shop called Edo collective displays clothes that are circular, slow or ethical – or all that together! Her concept is based on the values of the Edo period in Japan (1603 – 1867), when the country deliberately cut itself off from international trade and from raw material imports – and thus had to rely on using very well and very long the limited resources they had.