As the global fashion industry grapples with staggering waste—100 billion garments produced yearly, 92 million tonnes disposed—innovators are championing degrowth and upcycling to reshape its future. Degrowth advocates call for reducing production and consumption, prioritizing sufficiency, collaboration, and care over endless scaling.

Upcycling—transforming discarded clothing into higher-value pieces—embodies this ethos. A recent study in Turkey revealed how brands, designers, NGOs, and manufacturers creatively repurpose textile waste, challenging conventional notions of value. In India, enterprising startups like Dwij in Mumbai have converted over 2,500 pairs of discarded jeans into fashion accessories, sparing thousands of litres of water and generating income through local tailors. Meanwhile, organizations such as Goonj repurpose textile waste into mattresses and quilts, empowering communities across India and reimagining cloth as a development resource.

Beyond individual efforts, broader initiatives—like educational institutions teaching upcycling techniques and programs incentivizing waste collection—are building circular fashion infrastructure. Fashion weeks from London to Paris and New York have featured upcycled runway pieces, showcasing creativity born from resource scarcity.

As fashion's environmental reckoning deepens, upcycling and degrowth offer a promising path: turning waste into innovation and consumption into community-driven sustainability.