Zero Waste: use everything until it’s non-usable

Zero waste isn’t a trend, it’s the future. Based upon principles of human value and being ethically compliant, the menswear-turned-womenswear brand repurposes used and secondhand fabrics for its transformative apparel. Its ethical fashion represents an approach to design, sourcing, and manufacture of clothing which maximizes benefits to people and communities while minimizing impact on the environment.

Apparel designer Karen Glass calls zerøwaste her life work. “I made clothes for so long to just make money and that fundamentally bothered me,” she says. “zerøwaste became more about human value, what I can do to help women, how I can get back into a beautiful aesthetic that is relevant right now and also transcend my own life. Because serving, helping, [and] being the best person I can be is really important right now.
“The reason why we only use menswear is because I’m really touched by how people play with their sexual identity. I knew somewhere there was some sort of relationship and our social attribute, it gives women a chance to play,” Glass says. “I think, ‘What does it feel like to put on a garment that has a long history of men being in them?’ Clothes are so empowering, and that’s another part of what we do.”

The company partners with local women’s group Beloved — a home and program for adult women surviving prostitution, trafficking, and addiction — to train and hire seamstresses. Seamstresses exclusively work with transparent socially and environmentally compliant companies, implementing global textile standards and working with ethical sources. It’s the antithesis of fast fashion like your Urban Outfitters of the world. Instead, it’s driven by a conscious shift for people to care how the clothes were made, who made them, and try to focus their life with less clothes of greater value — that greater value, in this case, being human value.

There is a social attribute of zerøwaste called life/work, a work-training program for Beloved’s women to help teach a new working skill with which they can make a living wage. It’s a program where they learn hand-sewing techniques then, every three months, workers get reviewed with the possibility for incremental pay raises. After a year, these women have a choice to work on their own or be an independent contractor. The rehabilitation program is not just about victimized women — it’s also about the daily disciplined practice of coming into the studio, an environment of openness and healing. The studio is designed to be a space of quietude and safe space to talk about anything that is on the mind and it stays in the studio. Efforts focus on keeping a mind clear and focused on work so the women produce beautiful garments, one stitch at a time.

Glass is a self-taught designer who got her start in the early 1980s learning how to sew at the Virginia Marti College of Art and Design, later moving to New York to take sample hand work. That trip eventually turned into a much bigger role in the junior sportswear industry learning negotiation production business. She eventually started her own custom business in the old Flatiron Building. In 1993 she saw Chico’s had an ad in WWD for product development and production. She mailed in her résumé and soon moved to Turkey to learn about the supply chain and the business side of the world textile industry.

Fast-forward to 2010 when she was working with a company in Austria to develop an organic apparel line, aka where she really learned the nitty-gritty of ethical global textile standards. The knowledge she gained there really turned her on to the idea it’d be great to eventually do something like that in the U.S.

Before moving to Atlanta, Glass lived in Florida working on an organic farm and running a consulting business focused on design and process. The farm made her highly conscious of waste and reuse, an awareness she seamlessly applied to her design process. In 2014, Glass moved to Atlanta and found the Goat Farm Arts Center. She saw how people worked there — using existing materials and how that translated into a beautifully raw aesthetic. The combination of organic farm life, 20 years of fashion knowledge, an emphasis on process, and the energy of the Goat Farm is what made zerøwaste go from idea to inception. Since her move to Atlanta, things just clicked. The future starts now and Glass doesn’t plan to waste any time making this movement a way of life.

To see more fashions, visit www.zerowastekarenglass.com. If you’d like to see the studio and purchase the clothing, email for an appointment: intel@zerowastekarenglass.com.