COM/VERGE - The Business & Art of Fashion Upcycling

The Business Behind the Brand | Ten years ago, Conny Klotz and her co-founder Lotte Erhorn launched Bridge&Tunnel in Wilhelmsburg, an island district of Hamburg reachable only by bridges or the river Elbe tunnel. The name became a metaphor early on: building bridges. On one side were skilled women who couldn’t turn their sewing into a job. On the other were young designers who couldn’t find local production. 

They set out to connect these two needs. A strong social mission, with design as the vehicle to change something in society, has shaped the company’s history from the start. A decade later they have built an award-winning fashion upcycling enterprise, with an own brand specialized in denim, B2B upcycling-as-a-service production, and a skills development and knowledge transfer model. 

Angie and Conny talk about what it takes to build a competitive, socially and environmentally responsible volume upcycling production in Germany. They cover why pricing has been the hardest lesson of the ten years, what the new European regulation means for fashion upcycling producers, and how a social-first mission changes an upcycling business: what to simplify, and what never to compromise on. We also hear Conny’s idea of success and scale, and what, in the whole world, she would love to upcycle.

Photo Credit: Maxim Schulz

00:00:00 Wertschätzung: looking beyond the evident

00:06:12 Production from day one

00:09:24 First lessons: time, pricing and variation

00:16:56 From an own brand to B2B upcycling

00:21:41 Scale and the model that travels

00:27:05 Decisions: the mission comes first

00:31:40 Measuring impact: what changes for them

00:44:49 EU textile regulation

00:49:30 Teaming up with other upcyclers

00:54:55 What upcycling needs next

NOTES

• Visit Bridge&Tunnel  https://bridgeandtunnel.de/

• COM/VERGE Panel Talk & Live Podcast Recording - November 15th 2026 @ Rare Collective (Berlin-Friedrichshain). Registration & Details

Hosted by: ⁠Angie Aguirre, ⁠Founder, ⁠tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin⁠

Produced by: ⁠RIVED⁠ — Empowering Upcyclers

Culture & Society  |  Eric Vinsonneau, model, founder of RE/CLAIMED, and Fashion Revolution Ambassador, only walks for designers who carry a real sense of social accountability - conscious about what brand he lends his image to, looking for more than just aesthetics.

That standard comes from his own past advising corporate boards on sustainability, watching decisions get made by people fully disconnected from any real impact. He sees the same disconnection in the runway itself - a format that has looked essentially the same for over a century: sell the look, move the product, no substance, no why. 

With RE/CLAIMED, the concept show he is building with two friends and partners, he's working to close that gap - live upcycling, installations, gamification elements that go beyond aesthetics and include performances to showcase the fashion industry's problems and give the audience agency to leave the room and start changing. 

We talk about what Berlin and Kantamanto have in common, what a visit to an elderly center can teach about upcycling, and why Eric wants to upcycle men's suits.

Photo Credit: cheriebirkner

TOPICS DISCUSSED

02:53 — Modeling with a conscience: how the industry is slowly shifting, and what still holds it back

08:26 — Life inside corporate sustainability 

11:52 — Reinventing the fashion show 

20:10 — Berlin and Ghana: resilience, community, and a shared upcycling identity across two very different worlds

23:14 — Necessity, comfort, and what an elderly center in France taught Eric about upcycling

26:32 — The sustainability narrative fashion got wrong

28:10 — Inside RE/CLAIMED: live upcycling, a textile waste mountain, and measuring whether any of it actually changes behavior

34:40 — Closing question: what Eric would like to upcycle

RELATED LINKS

Eric @ Instagram

Eric @ LinkedIn

RE/CLAIMED

Fashion Revolution Germany

tHERAPY Antagonia Collection

COM/VERGE is hosted by ⁠Angie Aguirre, ⁠Founder of ttHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin⁠. ⁠Produced by: ⁠RIVED⁠ — Empowering Upcyclers

Culture & Society | Upcycling carries a quiet assumption: that using what already exists is automatically "sustainable by design." In this episode, Angie sits down with Dr. Luca Coscieme, Programme Lead for Sustainable Lifestyles at the Hot or Cool Institute, to see what the actual research says — also in light of the EU's incoming Green Claims Directive.

They talk about what "impact" really means beyond a single number or technical jargon — its systemic nature, the role advertising and social norms play, the myth of "consumer choice," and what a fair, honest way to measure an upcycler's own impact could actually look like. Less compliance checklist. More: are we actually moving in the direction we meant to?

TOPICS DISCUSSED

01:54 — The intro: from measuring entire economies to measuring what's in someone's closet

04:23 – What "impact" actually means today, and why sustainability can't be reduced to one number

10:50 – The uncomfortable data on who really overconsumes, and why fast fashion "democratizing" style doesn't hold up

15:05 — The question every upcycler should ask is not "is upcycling good,"

16:52 – Measuring impact from an upcycler´s perspective

19:05 – Wellbeing as the missing piece

27:06 — The EU's incoming greenwashing directive, and what it signals for small upcycling businesses

29:50 — Closing: What would you upcycle?

Hot or Cool - Research

Fashion Publications 

https://hotorcool.org/publications?categories%5B%5D=fashion

Report: Towards a Circular Wellbeing Economy: An Integrative Framework for Europe

https://hotorcool.org/publications/towards-a-circular-wellbeing-economy-an-integrative-framework-for-europe/

tHERAPY AWAKE Collection

Hosted by: Angie Aguirre, Founder, tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, BerlinGuest: Dr. Luca Coscieme, Programme Lead for Sustainable Lifestyles, Hot or Cool InstituteProduced by: RIVED — Empowering Upcyclers

The Hard Stuff - Business Skills for Upcyclers | The European Union is rebuilding how fashion is designed, sold, and disposed of — and for a one-person studio, keeping up with the pace of these changes can feel impossible. 

In this episode of COM/VERGE, Angie sits down with Katarina Biloglav, Public Affairs Manager at The Policy Hub, to make sense of what's actually happening in Brussels, and what it means — both the opportunities and the challenges — for upcyclers. 

Katarina walks us through what matters most from an independent designer's perspective, what's still being negotiated versus already decided, whether upcycling should count as art or commerce in the eyes of the law, and how enforcement actually works. 

The conversation also opens a bigger question: upcyclers are still underrepresented in Brussels — but a louder, unified voice could be what turns these rules into something that works for us, not just around us.

Would you join a group of upcyclers advocating together on EU policy?

TOPICS DISCUSSED

00:00 — Katarina's role: translating EU legislation for the fashion industry

02:26 — What The Policy Hub does, and its 700+ stakeholders

06:02 — Where upcyclers fit in Brussels advocacy — and the current gap

08:23 — The "consultants at the door" phenomenon

09:29 — The big picture: fashion's shift toward full-lifecycle regulation

11:16 — ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation)

13:29 — The legal line between reselling, repairing, and remanufacturing

14:29 — Micro-enterprise timelines and exemptions

15:12 — Incoming green claims / greenwashing regulation

16:22 — What the Digital Product Passport actually is, and isn't yet

18:16 — The robustness score, and the "Nutri-Score for fashion" comparison

21:35 — Why comparing different materials on one scale is complicated

24:11 — How the DPP could help upcyclers working with unknown materials

26:01 — Enforcement: who checks compliance, and the risk-based approach

28:39 — Non-EU imports, market surveillance gaps, and competitiveness

30:57 — Waste systems and the market for low-quality material

31:40 — Upcycling as craft vs. commerce, and the push toward digitalization

33:01 — Why a single set of rules can't fit every business size

34:03 — Upcycling's missing voice in Brussels, and the timeline ahead

35:45 — Does more visibility mean more regulation?

38:23 — Why grassroots knowledge matters as much as policy expertise

39:18 — Closing question: what Katarina would upcycle (conference banners and lanyards from Brussels events)

Host: Angie Aguirre, Founder, tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin

Guest: Katarina Biloglav, The Policy Hub

Produced by: RIVED — Empowering Upcyclers

The Business Behind the Brand | Michael Pfeifer didn't come to upcycling from fashion, but from a belief in business as a force for good. He studied business administration, worked corporate and startup jobs, and co-founded MOOT with Nils Neubauer, a trained fashion designer who'd seen fashion's waste problem up close.

MOOT started with 20 T-shirts made from bed sheets, launched during the lockdown. Today they work with some of Germany's largest corporates, transforming many different types of discarded material — textile and beyond — into a wide range of new products.

They deliberately partner with companies that have nothing to do with sustainability, because that's where they see the biggest potential to shift culture. They've also found a formula where the waste source is also responsible for, and makes revenue from, its own waste — MOOT provides upcycling as a service.

Angie and Michael talk through what it took to get there: closing two Berlin stores, moving from B2C to B2B, and the shift from design-led to volume-led — what creativity looks like once the goal is impact, not the single best piece.

Michael makes the case that one upcycled product, carrying its own story, changes how people think about consumption more than sustainability messaging ever could. And he tells us what, in the whole world, he'd love to upcycle.

Host: Angie Aguirre, Founder, tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin

Guest: Michael Pfeifer, CEO & Co-Founder of MOOT 

Produced by: RIVED — Empowering Upcyclers

Links : 

https://www.moot.eco/

Introduction story - cooperation with the German Football Association  https://www.instagram.com/p/DPoQ49VkeZy/

Angie Aguirre https://angie-aguirre.com/en

RIVED https://rived.community/

Photo: © FUNKE Foto Services | Sergej Glanze

The Business Behind the Brand | Josefina Coll, founder of Josefina Studio Berlin, joins Angie Aguirre to trace how she built a services-based upcycling studio instead of a traditional fashion label.

Starting from a childhood spent altering her own clothes in Uruguay, she arrived in Berlin during COVID with no job and no money, bartered sewing skills on a "Swap Your Skills" Facebook group, and turned that into a studio now serving 600+ students, corporate clients like Adidas, New Balance, and Zalando, and a growing teacher-training program. It's a direct answer to the growth question Episode 1 raised: Josefina scales by staying close to the community, and to herself — growing her impact not via products but with services. from custom sewing to teaching to training other designers. The conversation covers burnout, the economics of teaching versus custom orders, how brands really engage (or don't) with upcycling, and her belief that reinvention — not a fixed business model — is the actual product.

Topics covered:

• Origin story — how rebellion led to sewing, and her first business
• The move to Berlin and the job that didn't exist — landing on self-employment as necessity, not plan
• Why services instead of a product brand — the reasoning behind skipping collections, stock, and sizing
• Growth through burnout and correction — scaling into custom orders, hitting a wall, redesigning around teaching
• The teaching business today — courses, workshops, and training other designers to teach
• Working with corporate brands — what real engagement with upcycling looks like versus surface-level interest
• Upcycling as mindset, not technique — creativity, perfectionism, and who actually shows up to learn
• Annual reinvention as business philosophy — why nothing about the studio is meant to be permanent
• Closing question: what she'd upcycle — the case for making upcycling businesses themselves more sustainable

Host: Angie Aguirre, Founder, tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin

Guest: Josefina Coll, Founder of Josefina Studio 

Produced by: RIVED — Empowering Upcyclers

Links

https://www.josefina-studioberlin.com/

https://angie-aguirre.com/en

https://www.rived.community/

COM/VERGE–The Business & Art of Fashion Upcycling is a podcast by RIVED, the platform for the global fashion upcycling community.

The name COM/VERGE holds two ideas: community + convergence. Making the global fashion upcycling movement visible.

If you are building something in the upcycling space, or if you're interested in the future of fashion and what role upcycling plays in that future, this show is for you.

The Business Behind the Brand | Episode 01 introduces COM/VERGE's host, Mariángeles "Angie" Aguirre, founder of tHERAPY Recycle and Exorcise. Co-host AnaMaria walks her through ten years of running an upcycling brand across two continents.

They start with "Waste is Privilege", tHERAPY's iconic show at SO36 Berlin, and work back through Angie's path: from journalism in Argentina, to immigrating to Berlin, to founding tHERAPY in 2012.

The conversation surfaces some of the key questions that will drive this podcast: can — or should — upcycling scale, and how do you stay critical of the fashion system while working inside of it. A grounded, honest start built on collaboration over gatekeeping.

Topics covered:

• ​Why "Waste is Privilege" — and what that collection says about tHERAPY's direction and this podcast
• ​Starting tHERAPY without a fashion background, or the intention to build a "fashion brand"
• ​Running one upcycling brand across two continents
• ​Berlin's fashion scene, Fashion Week, and the space (or lack of it) for upcycling within it
• ​The open question: does upcycling have to scale to be a real business?
• ​Why collaboration and shared knowledge matter more than gatekeeping
• ​Angie's closing answer: what she'd like to upcycle next
• ​Coming up in Episode 2

Host: Mariángeles Aguirre, Founder, tHERAPY Recycle & Exorcise, Berlin

Guest host : AnaMaria, Quijano.-W. Co-Producer & Co-Founder, RIVED

Produced by: RIVED — Empowering Upcyclers

Links

https://angie-aguirre.com/en

https://www.rived.community/

Waste is Privilege Show:

https://www.therapy-berlin.com/watch-the-complete-fashion-show-video-waste-is-privilege-now-live?srsltid=AfmBOor8cfeM_y7qwhzp7uoB9ImpZve1R7NHPwRQOU8RIcAKcsv0RAY1