Joshua Williams: Each month on NewsBytes, we feature a fashion brand that approaches business differently and innovatively or operates outside of the main fashion systems and capitals. I'm with Sass Brown, an expert in ethical fashion, sustainability and craftsmanship. She is the former Dean of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the founding Dean at Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation.

Joshua Williams: Hello, Sass. Who are we featuring this month? 

Ah, Re;code, based in Korea. Can you tell us a little bit about them and what makes them unique. 

Sass Brown: Yeah, they are a really fabulous company. And they work effectively with upcycled materials, revalued, discarded, and unused materials. 

They're part of a larger conglomerate called Kolon Industries. They're a small subsidiary of it. And so they utilize the dead stock and the wasted materials from the other labels that are produced under the same umbrella company. So they use dead stock from their own warehouse. They use military waste. They use industrial waste, things like car seat covers and car airbags and seat belts and things like that. So, they do have some quite unique sources for their materials. 

And they do use also post-consumer, or finished garments anyway. So they dismantle them and reconstruct and redesign them. You can see it quite clearly when you look at their designs. You'll often see half a jacket front, which is inside out, or, you see the pocket details or a sweater that's been applicated on top of a sweater up front that's been appliqued on top of a shirt, for example. So you can see the reconstruction quite clearly in their aesthetic. 

Joshua Williams: How driven are they by a particular visual aesthetic or do they let the waste, the consumer waste that you're talking about sort of drive what that vision becomes? 

Sass Brown: I think it's a bit of both.

They have a very distinct aesthetic. You can pretty much tell a Re;code piece. They have a way of deconstructing and reconstructing their garments that's quite specific and quite unique and various aesthetically pleasing.

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