Where can you find baseball jerseys made from old lace tablecloths and produce bags made from old baseball jerseys? Look no further than Suay Sew Shop, the L.A. based sewing & production shop that creates garments and home goods from post-consumer waste, deadstock fabric, and organically grown fibers. Since its inception in 2017, the shop has committed to domestically repurposing textiles, supporting garment workers' rights, and revolutionizing how we can extend the lifecycle of our garments. Society of Cloth takes a deep dive into the various programs Suay has built to become a vanguard of a truly circular industry.
The Shop
Creating tasteful garments & accessories always holds its unique set of challenges, but those challenges multiply tenfold when the source material is pre-decided and pre-cut for you. It’s one thing to create a beautiful lace midi skirt, but a completely separate endeavor to create one from a 1990s tablecloth that has more than a few holes in it. At Suay’s website & L.A. store, expect to find jackets created from terry cloth, button downs made from old athletic banners, and t-shirts patched together from…other t-shirts? Although the materials from which the clothes are made may surprise you, the given is the store’s ability to consistently deliver on functionality and great garment design.
Community Dye Baths
“Don’t buy, just dye” is the motto of Suay Sew Shop’s community dye bath program, which has processed over 2 million pounds of textiles. Stated to be the largest reuse program of it’s kind, the SSS team encourages individuals to bring their textiles that are stained, faded, or just tired-looking into the workshop, where they can choose from a rotating selection of dyes that will be used to overdye and refresh the pieces. The color selection rotates monthly & ranges from surprising tie dyes to bold solid dyes. Many participants have taken to IG to mention how they were able to transform old family quilts, plain tote bags, or oil-stained t-shirts through the program.
Suay Studio
What does Suay Sew Shop do when given 20,000 unreparable Patagonia puffer jackets? Cut them all open and let the feathers fly EVERYWHERE. Suay Studio is the brand’s 2020 initiative to work directly with brands and consumers for various upcycling & repurposing projects, such as creating new clothing from damaged brand inventory or working on collaboration garments with textile artists. From working with Virgil Abloh to create masks during the pandemic to hosting pop-ups with independent designers, Suay Studio is a hub for sustainable collaboration.
Suay It Forward
Suay It Forward is the brand’s offering of a ThredUp-esque mail-in program, where customers can purchase bags to fill with old garments to donate to Suay Sew Shop and receive fixed store credit per bag. However, instead of reselling the clothing like ThredUp does, the garments are received by Suay at their warehouse in L.A. and transformed into new clothing and home goods to be sold by the shop.
Throughout all of our research and reporting within the industry, it’s safe to say we’ve seen upcycling initiatives before. What Suay Sew Shop shows us for the first time is a community-driven upcycling program that operates at this enormous scale with efficiency and grace. To put it into perspective, the shop has diverted 3.5 million pounds of textiles from landfills since launching in 2017. That’s enough textiles to cover 8 acres of land, or equivalent to the weight of 1,116 cars. And all that work is being done in one location in one city in the United States. Given that the United States produces 17 million tons of textile waste every year, we dare to think the progress that’s possible if a Suay Sew Shop could exist and operate in 10, or even 100 cities across the country.
