 | |
| Formation | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Founder |
|
| Headquarters | Frogtown, Los Angeles |
CEO | Lindsay Rose Medoff |
| Website | https://suayla.com |
Suay Sew Shop is a sustainable clothing and accessory manufacturing company based in Frogtown, Los Angeles. [1] Through upcycling of textiles, Suay reclaims used garments and uses them to create new items.
Suay Sew Shop was founded in late 2017 by Lindsay Rose Medoff (now the chief executive officer) [1] along with Tina Dosewell. [2] [3] The two met in 2004 through the local sewing community. [3] After working in the field of recycled and reworked clothing for over a decade, during which she also spent time as an organic farmer, Medoff opened Suay for the initial purpose of manufacturing Patagonia's "ReCrafted" line of apparel made from recycled Patagonia gear. The shop subsequently entered several other partnerships with corporations. [1]
The name Suay means "beautiful" in Dosewell's native Thai language. [3]
We are focused on helping individuals participate in a community-based cleanup economy.
Suay CEO Lindsay Rose Medoff [1]
The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the focus of Suay's activity. Setting corporate partnerships aside, the organization instead developed a high-filtration face mask made from shop towels, a design that was endorsed by Cleveland Clinic. By January 2021, the shop had donated over 220,000 of the masks to individuals in high-risk environments as well as schools, hospitals, and organizations including Refugee Health Alliance, Seeding Sovereignty, and Watts Community Core. Suay additionally began a food distribution program for garment workers and a textile upcycling program at the local level. [1]
As of September 2022, Suay was planning a partnership with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. [3]
Through a program dubbed "Know Your Grower, Know Your Sewer", Suay has provided garment workers in the Los Angeles area who had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with fresh produce for themselves and their families. [1] The program, a partnership with Frecker Farms and the Garment Worker Center, [4] functions as a one for one process in which customers can donate a produce box by buying one for themselves, or can choose to only donate. [1]
Suay collects donations of old clothing and other fabric items from the local community. Repairable items are fixed and given away for free, while other pieces are upcycled into new items to be sold [1] at an onsite retail store. Products include pants and shorts, beanies, and sweatshirts among other items. [3] As of March 2021 [update] , the shop was taking in thousands of pounds of textiles per week for repair or upcycling. [5] As of September 2022 [update] , Suay had diverted 381 short tons (346 metric tons) of clothing from landfills. [3]
The shop additionally offers clothing repair services, [1] fixing customers' damaged items with a turnaround time of three to seven days. [6] Costs for repair range from $10 to $40, with proceeds going to a fund for LA garment workers. [5] Tailoring, clothing customization, and quilting are also offered, and a dye bath open to the community for $12 to $16 per pound allows customers to re-dye their textiles in any of three colors Suay chooses each month. [2]
Suay exists to prove you can supply open air, bright light, a true living wage, security, safety and career advancement to your production team and still have a business.
Lindsay Rose Medoff [7]
Suay employs 30 sewers as of January 2021 [update] . [1] These employees are paid above minimum wage and play a role in the decision-making process at the company for various matters including the hiring process. [4] The company is planned to become worker-owned within the next few years, and intends to expand to other cities. [2]
The central ethos of Suay is circular production, in which textiles are reused and upcycled for as long as possible
Suay founder and CEO Lindsay Rose Medoff was named one of 11 "Women of the Year" for 2021 by Time Out for her work with the shop. [7]
Clothing are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head. Eyewear and jewelry are not generally considered items of clothing, but play an important role in fashion and clothing as costume.
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fabric, archaeologists believe Stone Age people across Europe and Asia sewed fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.
H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB or H&M Group is a multinational clothing company based in Sweden. Its focus is fast-fashion clothing for men, women, teenagers, and children. As of 2021, H&M Group operates in 75 geographical markets with 4,702 stores under the various company brands, with 107,375 full-time equivalent positions.
Used goods mean any item of personal property offered for sale not as new, including metals in any form except coins that are legal tender, but excluding books, magazines, and postage stamps.
Vintage clothing is a generic term for garments originating from a previous era. The phrase is also used in connection with a retail outlet, e.g. in vintage clothing store. Today vintage dressing encompasses choosing accessories, mixing vintage garments with new, as well as creating an ensemble of various styles and periods. Vintage clothes typically sell at low prices for high end named brands. It has been part of the world since World War I as an idea of reusing clothing because of the textile shortage.
Elysian Valley, commonly known as Frogtown, is a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, California, adjoining the Los Angeles River. It has two parks, both maintained by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA). The Frogtown Art Walk is a biennial event managed by the Elysian Valley Arts Collective to celebrate local area artists. Knightsbridge Theatre is a repertory theater company located in the neighborhood.
Patagonia, Inc. is an American retailer of outdoor clothing. It was founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973 and is based in Ventura, California.
Fast fashion is a term used to describe the clothing industry's business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail stores quickly, while demand is at its highest. The term fast fashion is also used generically to describe the products of the fast fashion business model.
Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value.
Sustainable fashion is an all-inclusive term describing products, processes, activities, and actors aiming to achieve a carbon-neutral fashion industry, built on equality, social justice, animal welfare, and ecological integrity. Sustainable fashion concerns more than addressing fashion textiles or products. It addresses the entire process in which clothing is produced, consumed and disposed of; who, what, how, when, where and the expected useful life of the product before entering landfill. The sustainable movement looks to combat the large carbon footprint that fast fashion has created by reducing the environmental impact of fashion such as air pollution, water pollution and overall climate change.
The textile and clothing industries provide a single source of growth in Bangladesh's rapidly developing economy. Exports of textiles and garments are the principal source of foreign exchange earnings. By 2002 exports of textiles, clothing, and ready-made garments (RMG) accounted for 77% of Bangladesh's total merchandise exports.
Looptworks is a Portland, Oregon business that upcycles or re-purposes abandoned, pre-consumer and post-consumer materials into limited-edition products. By re-using the world's pre-consumer excess, the U.S.-based company aims to "break the cycle of waste". The products created by Looptworks primarily focus on bags, accessories and clothing.
The SWAP Team is a Canadian non-profit organization that facilitates large-scale clothing swaps partnered with local charities that accept the leftover clothing at the end of the swap. The organization has established chapters across Canada, and in the United States, Australia, and Switzerland. Collectively, the chapters have donated more than 18,000 garments to its charity partner, the Salvation Army.
Kantamanto Market is a market area situated in the central business district of Accra, in Ghana. The market consists mostly of the typical Akan tribes of Kwahu's and Ashanti's. It is a well known market in Accra with a specialization in clothing resale. The site was important part of the informal economy of the city. At its peak it was the largest market used clothes market in West Africa.
The global trade of secondhand clothing has a long history. Until the mid 19th century, second hand clothing was an important way of acquiring clothing. Only through industrialization, mass production, and increasing income, was the general public able to purchase new, rather than second-hand, clothing.
Clothing industry or garment industry summarizes the types of trade and industry along the production and value chain of clothing and garments, starting with the textile industry, embellishment using embroidery, via the fashion industry to apparel retailers up to trade with second-hand clothes and textile recycling. The producing sectors build upon a wealth of clothing technology some of which, like the loom, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine heralded industrialization not only of the previous textile manufacturing practices. Clothing industries are also known as allied industries, fashion industries, garment industries, or soft good industries.
KSENIASCHNAIDER is a Kyiv-based brand which led by Ksenia and Anton Schnaider. The brand was established in 2011, but gained a worldwide recognition in 2016 with the invention of demi-denims. The model was created as a combination of the culottes and the skinny jeans.
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Sara Penn (1927–2020) was the owner of Knobkerry, a clothing and antiques store, gallery, cultural center, and arts space in Downtown Manhattan from the 1960s to the 1990s. Penn designed clothes that utilized global and historical textiles. Many of her clothing display strong African, East and Southeast Asian, and Indigenous American influences. She also maintained and displayed an inventory of art objects from across the globe.
Coordinates: 34°06′12.0″N118°14′36.5″W / 34.103333°N 118.243472°W