Joshua Samuels' answer to fashion waste: 'Wear them. Fix them. Cut them up'

In London, designer Joshua Samuels made a business out of not making anything new. For years, he and his team have been rescuing discarded textiles from being landfilled and transforming them into streetwear pieces that have found consumers all over the world.

“Our pretty conservative estimate is that we’ve rescued around 18,000 garments from landfill since the start of 2025,” Samuels told FashionUnited, adding that he would love to one day document and publish every garment they have rescued. “A scheme where you can see which pieces your garment was made with. In the grand scheme of the fashion industry, we’re obviously tiny, but we still get through a surprising amount.”

In August, Samuels released his latest collection, Peakaboo, taking his commitment to sustainability even further by creating every piece through what he describes as “reverse” manufacturing.

“It’s actually a pretty long process. The fabric gets sewn on first, then cut into, turned back and faced, topstitched, backed, pressed, faced again, and topstitched again. So it ends up looking really simple, but there’s quite a lot going on underneath,” he explained. “More generally though, ‘reverse manufacturing’ is kind of how we work anyway. Making something from something that’s already been made.”

The process is the antithesis of fast fashion. “It just takes ages,” Samuels said. The designer spends extra time not only constructing the garment, but also sourcing vintage pieces that will eventually become the foundation of his creations.

“The funny thing is, the finished pieces don’t look especially complicated. If anything, they look quite clean and simple. But getting them to look that way takes loads of little stages and a lot of time. I think that’s probably the hardest bit, putting loads of work into something without making it look overworked,” he said.

The fashion industry is responsible for 92 million tonnes of waste annually, with projections reaching 134 million tonnes by 2030, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Meanwhile, the concern over sustainability has gradually faded in the fashion industry in recent years — sustainability and circularity did not appear among the Top 10 industry themes in the McKinsey & Company State of Fashion 2026 report for the first time in a decade.

Going against the tide, Samuels said he is a bit cynical about whether sustainability was ever actually that central to the industry’s agenda. “A lot of the industry is built around growth and selling more stuff every year. Sustainability became a very useful thing for them to talk about for a while, but I’m not sure that means the actual priorities ever really changed,” he said.

“Make less f… stuff,” Samuels said

According to the UNEP, the global textile and apparel industry produces over 100 billion garments annually, a 60 percent increase since 2010. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, only about 12 percent of textiles are collected globally for reuse or recycling, and less than 1 percent of used clothing is recycled back into new garments.

“The whole model is insane. Make thousands in the hope you sell hundreds, discount the rest, bin what’s left, then do it all again three weeks later. The waste is basically baked into the business model. And then everyone gets very excited because the next 40,000 units are made from an "organic" cotton,” he said. “There are already enough clothes in the world. Wear them. Fix them. Cut them up. Make them weird. Make fewer new ones.”

Samuels’ Peakaboo collection is produced entirely from repurposed vintage garments, according to the designer. The collection features bags, shirts, tees, and hats, and is now available on the brand’s website.