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Many second hand clothes are on sale at cheap prices in Thailand.

Beam Bold advocates ‘buy less, buy better’ to supplant fast fashion with sustainable retail

  • Brand was launched in 2018 by a former banker who wanted to bring sustainable and size-inclusive fashion to women and girls
  • Sustainability is expected to reshape the fashion sector in 2023, McKinsey report says

Hong Kong fashion start-up Beam Bold hopes to capitalise on the sector’s growing sustainability trend.

It was launched in 2018 by Audra Gordon, who left a career in banking because she wanted to bring sustainable and size-inclusive fashion to women and girls.

Gordon’s passion for sustainable fashion was ignited during a stint as a marketing consultant in Ghana in 2014, when she saw first-hand the huge amounts of second-hand clothes being dumped in landfills. “Textile waste is a huge problem. I felt like I needed to do something about it,” Gordon said.

Fast fashion is a major contributor of clothes that are eventually and effectively dumped in communities in Africa. In 2023, however, sustainability is expected to reshape the fashion sector, with top executives focusing on sustainability projects, according to the latest “The State of Fashion” report by McKinsey.

Green is the new black as sustainability pressures China’s fashion industry

Making the industry more climate conscious will require reducing consumption and extending product lifespans through design, recycling materials and adopting innovative fibres, the report said. These measures warrant more attention from the sector.

“Progress in these two areas could enable the industry to significantly improve its sustainability, thanks to the emergence of cost-competitive solutions and the potential to tangibly connect with customers,” the report said.

Meet Billie, Hong Kong’s clean solution to turn textile waste into yarn

Currently, the fashion industry is a major contributor to climate change and pollution, producing nearly 20 per cent of waste water and emitting about 10 per cent of carbon emissions globally, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Beam Bold’s Gordon has been living in Hong Kong since 2011, and felt that its trade hub status as well as proximity to manufacturers in China meant it was the best location to set up shop. In the early days, the brand picked up faster than she imagined, and her first line of clothes was featured at Runway Asia, Hong Kong New York Fashion Week and US Fashion Connect Africa in Ghana.

“I went to Ghana for a runway show, which was a full-circle moment because that is where the brand idea was born,” Gordon said.

Selvaage is a recently launched Hong Kong-based men’s label that makes functional clothing which is responsibly produced but not at the expense of good design.
Other brands such as Singaporean start-up Style Theory have been tapping into a growing appetite for sustainable clothing, or circular fashion. The start-up has received around US$30 million from investors including Softbank Ventures Asia and Alpha JWC Ventures since its inception in 2016.

Young consumers in particular have started to shift away from fast fashion, with more than half of China’s Gen Z consumers saying they intended to reduce the amount of such clothes that they bought, according to Credit Suisse report released in February.

Each year the fashion industry produces more than 100 billion apparel, roughly 14 for every person on Earth. Every day, tens of millions of garments are tossed out to make way for new items.
Audra Gordon in a Beam Bold dress. Photo: Handout

Beam Bold is striving to change this by adopting natural materials. Its products are made from a blend of silk and cotton, which is also more suitable for humid environments. Each item has a few extra inches of fabric embedded in the lining, allowing the waistband to be adjusted, if you gain or lose weight, for example.

Gordon also uses digital print technology to reduce water and energy waste, and reusable packaging with tags that are made of natural, recycled materials. Additionally, the clothes are made to order.

“I want to change the consumer mindset to ‘buy less and buy better quality’, [potentially owning] something that lasts for a lifetime,” she said.

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