Upcycling has become a welcome rage in a world where things are being discarded at a very fast pace. Old furniture that’s no longer in trend, discarded clothes with minor wear-tear, and discarded tyres are being upcycled for good. Likewise, Archivist Studio has been making timeless, upcycled shirts from the old bed linen of luxury hotels.
Image: Archivist
Sustainable clothing line Archivist is giving new lease of life to old hotel linens by turning them into comfortable work shirts and loungewear for men and women. Dutch entrepreneurs Eugenie Haitsma and Johannes Offerhaus launched the eco-friendly venture after they felt inspired to prevent the old bed linens from ending up in landfills.
It began with a wonderment of the creator Eugenie Haitsma; what happens to hotel sheets after they are discarded. She contacted a friend who worked at a luxury hotel in London’s Mayfair to find the answer to her question and discovered that they are regularly thrown away, even for the smallest of holes or stains which can be mended.
Image: Archivist
She asked her friend to send her some sheets. She found that the sheets were in really good quality condition, nice Egyptian cotton, soft and still in good shape. The fabric was perfectly suited to make white shirts.
The brand’s co-founder Johannes Offerhaus, a designer known for his sculptural couture designs, also conferred this view. The pair had met on a bus in Budapest, striking up a three-and-a-half-hour conversation en route to a party. Offerhaus was ‘looking for something purposeful’ to create and was struck by Haitsma’s bright idea.
Image: Archivist
Upon learning about the wasteful lifecycle of the bedding, Offerhaus and Haitsma managed to save 200 kilograms of fine Egyptian cotton hotel bedsheets to re-tailor it all into sustainably sourced clothing.
Offerhaus says,
For now it is all about shirts, but ‘we are definitely 100% open, to blouses, shirt dresses. We wanted to start with this super basic shirt to make it easy to see that it’s created from beautiul, simple, upcycled fabric.
Archivist Studio already has enough fabric to last for the next three years. All production is currently done in a family-run factory in Romania but Haitsma and Offerhaus hope to bring production closer to home.
The shirts are free to ship within the EU and are priced around €150 ($164). Although the price tag may be slightly above typical consumer budgets, the company is still setting an example for responsibly sourced materials.