Garment Factory Floor Clippings, Find New Life

New clothing brand Looptworks launched its first limited edition clothing line today. However, this collection is unlike no other; every scrap of clothe, every button, every zipper, is 100% pre-consumer (never worn) excess.


The eco-friendly company was founded in Portland, Oregon as a designer brand fixed around their self-described philosophy of “upcycling.” A new concept they describe as gathering the unused excesses from other garment makers and creating limited edition runs of clothes made with exactly zero new materials.


According to their website, “every week, the average textile factory produces 60,000 pounds of pre-consumer waste.” Looptworks is an effort to clean up this mess and capitalize on the opportunity. By using otherwise trashed, quality fabrics to design limited runs they have shortened the design cycle to weeks instead of months. Because of this method, every article produced is inching closer to the last.

Looptworks has added a personal touch numbering each product from a single source in succession so that just how many garments would have gone to waste from a single find can be seen.


Founding partners Gary Peck, Scott Hamlin and Jim Stutts, have experience working at apparel companies like, Nike, adidas, and Royal Robbins, and have brought these influences to Looptworks.


The current line-up of 17 stlyes has an urban flare, including graphic tees with sustainability mottos. Future styles are of course impossible to determine, as the company is totally reliant on what they can find in the heaps of excess from textile factories in Malaysia, India, and elsewhere.


Initially the clothes will only be available at Looptworks.com, but the company plans to move products into specialty retailers in the near future.