Circular by Instinct: How Independent Brands Are Designing With the End in Mind

Jenny Daphne Pitsillides – Editor | Re:Fabricate — Real Solutions for a Better Fashion Industry

In a small studio, bolts of fabric do not arrive pristine and uniform. They arrive irregular. Offcuts, deadstock, garments with a previous life. Designing here begins not with a sketch, but with a question of availability. What is already in the room.

For independent fashion brands working with circularity, this is often the starting point. Not trend forecasting, not volume planning, but material reality. Circularity, in this context, is less an ideology than a method. A way of working shaped by scale, constraint and proximity to making.

This case study looks at a handful of independent and international brands using publicly documented practices to explore how circular design functions when resources are limited and authorship is close to production. What emerges is not a single model, but a shared disposition: design that anticipates its own afterlife.

Designing from what already exists

For Marine Serre, circularity entered the vocabulary early through upcycling. The brand’s collections have consistently incorporated reclaimed textiles, household linens and surplus fabrics, assembled into garments that make no attempt to hide their past.

What is notable is how this material logic has gradually informed the brand’s wider system. Regenerated fibres now sit alongside upcycled pieces. Iconography remains consistent even as sources vary. Circularity here is not a capsule but an organising principle that adapts as the brand grows.

The design challenge is legibility. Making garments that feel intentional rather than compromised. Marine Serre’s success suggests that aesthetic coherence can emerge from constraint when it is embedded at the level of design language, not appended later.

Waste as a starting point

British designer Bethany Williams approaches circularity through social and material entanglement. Collections have drawn on surplus textiles sourced from waste streams, charity partnerships and unused stock, often produced in collaboration with community organisations.

Publicly available documentation shows how material sourcing informs silhouette and construction. Patchworking is not decorative. It is functional. Fabric inconsistency becomes a design driver rather than an obstacle.

Here, circularity extends beyond material reuse into labour structures and local networks. The garment is only one outcome of a broader system. This makes replication difficult, but impact tangible. Circularity is not abstract. It is situated.

Systems, not slogans

At RÆBURN, circularity is framed as a design methodology. The brand’s Remade line is built around surplus military textiles and industrial waste, re engineered into contemporary outerwear.

What distinguishes RÆBURN is the clarity of its process. Public communications map the journey from material source to finished product with unusual transparency. Design teams work backwards from available stock, developing modular patterns that can accommodate variation.

This system led approach allows circularity to scale modestly without losing coherence. It also exposes the limits. Supply is unpredictable. Consistency requires compromise. The brand acknowledges this openly, positioning circularity as an evolving practice rather than a solved problem.

Craft, time and care

Indian inspired slow fashion label Story mfg. approaches circularity through longevity rather than recovery. Natural dyes, hand weaving and low impact processes are central to its public narrative.

While not strictly circular in a closed loop sense, the brand designs for extended use and repair. Garments are intended to age visibly. Fading is not failure. It is evidence of life.

This approach reframes circularity as cultural rather than technical. If a garment remains worn, loved and repaired, its environmental footprint shifts by default. The challenge is economic. Slow processes limit output and raise prices. Accessibility remains uneven.

Hybrid identities

For Ahluwalia, circularity intersects with identity and storytelling. Early collections used deadstock fabrics to explore diasporic narratives through patchwork and colour.

As the brand has grown, its material strategy has diversified. Upcycling sits alongside responsibly sourced new fabrics. The circular impulse remains, but adapts to commercial reality.

Public examples show a brand negotiating scale without abandoning its origins. Circularity becomes one thread among many. Not erased, but contextualised. This hybridity may prove more resilient than purist models.

The limits of circular purity

Across these examples, a pattern emerges. Circularity at independent scale thrives on intimacy with material and process. It struggles with consistency, cost and replication.

None of these brands claim total circularity. Nor do they present their models as universally transferable. Instead, they demonstrate how design decisions can anticipate end of life, reuse or longevity without collapsing under their own idealism.

Trade offs are visible. Upcycling can limit sizing. Natural dyes can complicate care. Remade garments resist uniformity. These frictions are part of the system, not bugs to be erased.

Why independence matters

Independent brands occupy a particular position in the fashion ecosystem. They are small enough to experiment, close enough to production to adapt quickly, and visible enough to influence discourse disproportionate to their size.

Their circular practices are not blueprints, but proofs of concept. They show that circularity can be designed into form, narrative and system, rather than appended as messaging.

What they offer is not certainty, but possibility. A reminder that design choices accumulate. That materials carry memory. That the future of fashion may be shaped, quietly, by those working with what is already at hand.

References

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2019) Circular Design for Fashion.

Fashion Revolution (2022) Upcycling and Design Practice.

Brand websites and published sustainability statements: Marine Serre, Bethany Williams, RÆBURN, Story mfg., Ahluwalia.