About Converted Closet
Kate McGuire founded Converted Closet to showcase her design-led upcycled couture and to inspire and empower others to give a second life to their own unworn clothes.
Upcycling or ‘converting’ clothes already in existence creates the best type of fashion—fully sustainable and original. Conversion is a solution to one of the fashion industry’s biggest environmental issues: waste. We are manufacturing 150 billion new garments a year, yet we’re not wearing 80% of clothes in our closets. Our appetite for ‘new’ fashion has to change. Converting clothes is life changing magic that anyone can do for the ultimate fashion fix that is kinder to our planet. The conversion potential in all our closets is huge!
Conversion is accessible and inclusive; it is about redesigning clothes to reflect our own personal style, where even a small change can have a radical effect. It’s about refashioning garments and adapting them to our shape, size, gender or ability, creating truly bespoke luxury fashion. Instead of buying new, we are actively putting less strain on our natural world, and actually helping to regenerate it. Conversion makes us all sustainable fashion activists and truly ‘fashion conscious’. Refashioning and redesigning clothes is the new cool.
Upcycling clothes in this particular design-led way is not only more sustainable than buying new, but the experience of wearing a converted garment is intensely rewarding and meaningful – it’s incomparable to buying new, off-the-peg. What is special about this Conversion movement is that we’re turning the fashion industry on its head. We’re not being dictated to, but we’re deciding on the styles that we want and producing ‘new’ items that are making us feel good about ourselves because they’re boosting our confidence, but not to the detriment of the environment.
Since 2016, Converted Closet has grown and developed a community of budding refashion designers who help to educate and inspire each other. From students to home converters, fashionistas and budding entrepreneurs, Converted Closet is a platform for everyone interested in design-led upcycling and a more sustainable fashion.
Converted Closet aims to demystify the process of converting clothes and encourages followers to unleash their inner designer, producing sustainable fashion without sacrificing style. At Converted Closet, we see a new fashion world where anyone can revamp their closet and rediscover their confidence using simple tips shared within the design-led upcycling community.
Creating fashion that is kinder to the planet – what’s not to love?
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