This Taiwan-based denim label is championing sustainable denim with a social conscience

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16th Oct 2019

When University for the Creative Arts graduate Kuan Chen returned to Taipei from the UK in 2014, her mission was clear. Step one: raise awareness of sustainability among Taiwan-based shoppers. Step two: think up a way to address critical discarded clothing statistics. 

The insomnia-inducing numbers? It’s currently estimated that more than 70,000 tons of clothes are ditched in Taiwan every year, the equivalent of 483 pieces of clothing per minute. 

The 35-year-old’s solution was Story Wear, a “zero-waste fashion brand” that emerged out of Chen’s in-depth fashion blog, which probed the industry’s clothing waste issue and offered practical advice to shoppers — from where to buy organic cotton to spotlighting local brands that were kinder to the planet. Convinced she could do better than the labels already out there, Chen took matters into her own hands, designing clothes that looked and felt good while using “as much waste materials as much as possible”.

“I wanted to continue promoting the concept of sustainable fashion and educate consumers about what is good for the environment,” Chen tells , “but also change the concept of mass production by using a social enterprise model.”

The journey to make other people’s waste fashionable — specifically discarded denim — took the designer on a painstaking, year-long research trip across Taiwan, visiting countless recycling factories. That’s when it dawned on Chen that a circular fashion economy also offered the opportunity to recruit a local workforce of women who have come through Taiwan’s care system. Today, the mothers from the cooperative social welfare organisation are now as much a part of Story Wear’s DNA as the recycled and remixed denim pieces delivering a one-of-a-kind approach on a larger scale. 

For more on Taiwan’s upcoming labels and the best street style from Taipei Fashion Week spring/summer 2020, head here.  

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