FLÖDE is a research-driven upcycling studio and remanufacturing lab founded in 2024 with one purpose: to prove that sustainable fashion production is not only possible, it’s necessary, scalable, and better by design. Where others see textile waste, Flöde sees a vast, untapped resource.
Beyond waste: How Flöde turns discarded clothing into new products
Unlike traditional recyclers, Flöde rejects the downcycling of materials and instead pioneers value-adding and scalable upcycling methods, preserving fiber integrity while transforming surplus garments into premium products. Flöde’s approach is holistic, tactile, and grounded in the belief that deep knowledge and design thinking is a tool for systems change.
It’s not about optimizing the linear – it’s about building the circular from the ground up.
The statistics are sobering: over 87% of discarded textiles are either incinerated or sent to landfills, costing the global economy over €100 billion annually. But at Flöde, they don’t see waste, they see mismanaged abundance. These materials aren’t trash; they’re resources waiting to be reimagined.
“IN A WORLD OBSESSED WITH THE NEW, FLÖDE DARES TO ASK: WHAT IF THE MATERIAL WE NEED IS ALREADY IN OUR HANDS?”
Flöde’s mission is to challenge these assumptions and offer something radically different: a blueprint for circular textile systems that are profitable, local, transparent, and future-ready.
The FLÖDE Method: Upcycling in Action
At the Stockholm-based workspace, called the No New Material Lab, remanufacturing isn’t an idea, it’s a process. Hands-on, iterative, and data-driven. Flödes methods combines material science, experimental pattern drafting, craftsmanship, and systems thinking to generate new value from old, discarded garments, the lab operates like a circularity command center.
Material Intelligence / Textile Archaeology
Flöde begins at the source: discarded garments on their way to landfill. In partnership with the Artikel 2 facility south of Stockholm, the team manually sorts and analyzes post-consumer textiles by fiber composition, color, durability, and aesthetic potential. This creates a living material library that feeds both the design process and the customers’ insight needs.
Constraint-Led Design / Prototyping with Purpose
Flöde creates with limits, not in spite of them. The products are developed through hands-on pattern drafting experiments, from specific waste categories using only pre-existing materials to prove upcycling can be aesthetically clean and commercially viable. From business shirts to basic knits, Flöde builds new forms from fragmented histories.
Knowledge Distribution / Next-Gen Education
Circularity demands capacity-building. Flöde works with vocational schools, universities, and municipalities to train the next generation of sustainable textile workers. Through workshops, lectures, and mentorship, Flöde introduces students to practical methods like material tinkering, a technique that turns flaws into features, while fostering a mindset of responsibility, care, and curiosity.
Beyond Compliance: Leading the Shift
As the EU’s textile regulations draw nearer, many brands are rushing to retrofit circularity into outdated systems. Flöde is taking a different approach. Rather than viewing the upcoming policy changes as a threat, Flöde recognizes them as catalysts, a necessary disruption that will prompt stakeholders across the value chain to redefine what “value” truly means. For Flöde, sustainability is not a feature or a marketing angle; it is a foundational principle.
Flöde isn’t waiting for legislation to catch up with ambition. By investing now in new knowledge about scalable upcycling methods, local and transparent processes, and hands-on training, Flöde is already designing the future.
From Value Chain to Value Network
The traditional linear value chain is no longer fit for purpose. In its place, Flöde is contributing to the development of value networks: dynamic ecosystems of stakeholders like designers, institutions, and collaborators who are connected not just by contracts, but by shared values.
Flöde advocates for open collaboration, shared infrastructure, and product development that prioritizes durability, disassembly, and rediscovery from the inside out. True circularity, according to Flöde, emerges not from isolated innovation but from distributed, collective action.
The Road Ahead: Rethink Everything Educate. Elevate. Circulate.
FLÖDE is not merely innovating within fashion, it is actively challenging prevailing ideas about entrepreneurship, growth, and success. The goal is not infinite scaling, but rather to build systems that are replicable, rooted, and regenerative, offering services that enable others to create better products and processes as well.
In Flödes vision, the fashion system will not change through incremental tweaks; it will transform when industry actors choose to operate differently, with humility, care, and conviction. True circular economy demands more than patched up products or recycled fibers – it demands us to collectively rethink society at large and push both production and consumption towards a quality over quantity mindset.
The future economy must be built with what already exists.
“Textile ‘waste’ is a myth. It’s simply material that we’ve failed to value due to a lack of knowledge, and an unhealthy obsession with capital.”
– Sofia M. Westin, Founder & Director, FLÖDE –
