How emerging designers are making fashion circular | Mint

At the Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI (Fashion Design Council of India) in October, finalists of the R|Elan Circular Design Challenge, a platform for emerging fashion and accessory designers to showcase products designed keeping circularity in mind, will compete for the top award.

The finalists of the sixth edition of the challenge, which sees participation from across the world, are Wenyan Wu, Tsang Fan Yu, Ritwik Khanna, Chandni Batra, Gautam Malik and Silvia Acien.

While talking about the finalists, Rakesh Bali, senior vice-president of Reliance Industries Pvt. Ltd, which organises the annual competition, said the designers “are aware of the environmental impact of traditional fashion practices and are committed to implementing solutions that reduce waste.”

Lounge spoke with the finalists about their work and what drives them.

Silvia Acién credits her interest in fashion circularity to her parents, both organic tomato farmers in the south of Spain. They always taught her the importance of caring for what she consumes. “This philosophy extends from food to clothing, as both impact our health, appearance, and biodiversity. So, when I decided to start my label, I knew I couldn’t participate in the fashion industry without committing to regeneration and sustainability,” says the designer, who did her bachelor’s in knitwear at Central Saint Martins.

Acién works with plant-based fibres such as Himalayan nettle, pineapple, hemp and lotus flowers and uses natural dyes. She also experiments with bacteria-derived dyes to reduce water usage. “The fashion industry is in a state of emergency,” she says. “As designers, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to bring sustainability and circularity into the spotlight.”

Jaggery by Gautam Malik turns waste like discarded car seat belts, cargo belts and post-consumer textile waste into stylish bags and accessories, all made by women. The brand’s goal is to create a social impact with every bag. “The mountains of textile waste plaguing India (7,793 kilo tonnes end up in landfills annually), were a wake-up call,” says Malik.

The brand follows a 10-step, waste-agnostic process, rooted in circular economy principles. It starts with identifying waste streams, disinfection, material preparation, deconstruction, reassembly, sampling, re-manufacturing, carbon-neutral shipping, and even considers the product’s end-of-life through repurposing reusable materials back into production cycle for future runs. “Sustainability shouldn’t be a niche; it should be the norm in fashion,” says Malik. “This is why we operate on a product-as-a-service model, where every product makes an impact, accompanied by a lifetime warranty and buy-back possibilities, and shipped in textile waste dust bags.”

“Every day on my way to work, I would cross the Ghazipur landfill (in Delhi) rising over the horizon. It was appalling,” Chandni Batra says while explaining the reason behind starting her footwear label, A Blunt Story. Her products are made using plant-based and recycled materials. The materials developed by the label aims to replace all plastic in footwear, even foamed PU and EVA, and polyester, which reduces the label’s carbon emissions by 35-50%.

“Our proprietary soles, UNCRUDE, are wholly plastic free and made from renewable plant-based inputs. The footbed is 96% bio-based and the outsole is 70% bio-based,” claims Batra. She uses agricultural waste from rice harvest, leather offcuts from the luxury automotive industry and post-consumer garment and PET waste.

Ritwik Khana loves the way denim looks after years of use, and his label Rkive works with post-consumer textiles to create eco-friendly fashion. He uses deconstruction to unravel the seams of each end-of-life garment, avoiding traditional cutting techniques in favour of mindful deconstruction, to preserve every part of the garment. This process also unveils denim’s genuine wash, enabling an understanding of sun fades and wash patterns.

“Our long-term goal is to establish a carbon-neutral loop system for textiles, going beyond our role as a resource dependent business to one that is resource abundant,” says Khana.

Tsang Fan Yu (APAC region)

Before studying fashion design, Tsang Fan Yu was a social worker in Japan. This background instilled a concern for the social and environmental impacts of the fashion industry, compelling him to explore alternative methods to reduce the carbon footprint of fashion.

He repurposes materials such as abandoned kimonos, used vehicle airbags, discarded parafoil kites, and life jacket textile waste to create sustainable designs from what would otherwise be dumped.

“I encourage collaborations among stakeholders in the textile industry, including manufacturers and brands as the current system is inherently unsustainable,” he says. “By prioritising sustainability, we can shift from a cycle of disposability to one that values longevity, ethical practices, and environmental harmony.”

Milan-based Wenyan Wu repurposes second-hand clothes. Over 80% of the products she sells and designs come from reuse: like closet clutter, demoded shirts or vintage clothes.

Overconsumption and fast fashion aids the designer to acquire many second-hand clothes, which are then remade. “Sustainability is no longer a choice in today’s world, but something that every industry must strive for and achieve,” she says.

Dhara Vora Sabhnani is a Mumbai-based writer.