By Margaret Badore, Source: Treehugger

Anne Pringle got the inspiration to start her company while looking for interview clothing. “I couldn’t find professional, ethical clothes,” she said. Living in Toronto, she could find lots of cool upcycled clothing, but none of it was appropriate for business attire.

Pringle is the co-founder of LB Designs (formerly known as Local Buttons), which remakes old clothing into fashionable new garments in Haiti. Their signature designs are blazers and work-ready skirts, made primarily from men’s shirts, jackets and pants. The company was financed in part using money Pringle and her partner earned as bartenders, and also got some help from a Haitian investor who owns the factory where LB does its production.

The company is committed to ethical production, paying its employees fair wages and continuing to look for ways to makes their products more sustainable. They’re getting some help from Tasha Lewis, a professor of fiber science and apparel design at Cornell University.

Lewis became interested in LB Designs as a case study in how to deal with fabric waste. Only about 15 percent of textiles are recycled in the U.S., amounting to 2 million tons of clothing and carpeting. Lewis’ students helped streamline LB’s process of deconstruction and design.

The journey of most second hand clothing is a complex one. In the U.S., clothing is typically donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. These organizations sort the garments and select the items that are in good enough condition to resell in their charity shops. What doesn’t make the cut is sorted again into grades by quality, and sold via brokers to markets in other countries.

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