Agnès Rusiñol, director of the CCAM, explains the 080 Reborn project
080 Barcelona Fashion is a platform that promotes Catalan fashion designers and firms internationally. One of its distinguishing features is its commitment to sustainability. For this reason, for a few years, he has been organizing the 080 Reborn, parades with second-hand clothes.
What are the 080 Reborn?
These are parades that show how clothes that are no longer used can be given a second life. We wanted to take advantage of the visibility of the 080 to convey values that we consider essential for the society we want: sustainability, but also feminism. We started working on this axis in 2022, in coordination with the Waste Agency, and launched the 080 Reborn project, which consists of taking pieces from different second-hand shops and entities and creating new collections with them.
What impact has it had?
It has been very positive. On the one hand, we received the recognition of the entities that are dedicated to the collection and reuse of clothes, who thanked us for bringing second-hand clothes up to a first-class catwalk, because there is still a lot here stigma surrounding this type of consumption. On the other hand, in other countries, second-hand clothing is cool and shows a responsible and conscious attitude. We want people to realize that going second-hand is also attractive and fun.
On the other hand, we have achieved a great international impact. We even received an offer from a Chinese distributor who wanted to buy us the denim collection from the second edition of 080 Reborn, the one from October 2023. They were original creations made by our designers with scraps of recycled Texan clothing, bought from different entities. This initiative, which we did with a local vision, has been pioneering and has been very successful. We’ve seen publications in Korea, China, and America talking about the Reborn shows because they loved the aesthetic. This makes us very proud.
New and second-hand clothes, the future of fashion
The textile industry is the second most polluting in the world and faces inevitable change. Europe has set 2030 as the deadline for clothing manufacturers to be responsible for recovering and recycling the garments they have produced. This implies a change in the business model, where new and second-hand clothes will coexist and complement each other.
What will this change look like?
Manufacturers will have to create mechanisms to recover their clothes, to recycle them and see what they do with them. Maybe they’ll upcycle, which is transforming old clothes into new ones with more value, or maybe they’ll clean, iron and resell them. The stores will offer new clothes, but also their own clothes that have been used. The consumer will be able to choose and combine the two options. Brands will have to see the opportunity to exhibit in a parade new pieces and others that are emblematic of their history, recovered. This is the future: we cannot produce new collections of 180 pieces with hundreds or thousands of units each every six months. We have to reduce more and think that maybe what we will sell will not be all new. In Korea, for example, the resale of luxury goods is on the rise. There is a huge market, and this is where we need to enter. Over time, I think it will be cool for brands to parade their best-selling pieces, the ones that identify them a lot, their legacy, alongside newly created capsules.
How can you know if a brand is sustainable?
One of the most important tools will be the digital passport. It will be the DNI of the piece, which cannot be forged like the current labels, which only say where it was manufactured and the size. It will be done with blockchain technology, which is a secure and transparent record system. The digital label will show all the steps the piece has followed, from the raw material to the point of sale. In this way, the consumer will be able to really analyze which brands are sustainable and which are doing greenwashing, which is pretending to be sustainable without being so.
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