AFTUR - Iceland

The fashion brand AFTUR was launched in 1999 to recycle textiles and design classic 'slow fashion'.

Recycle or die! The slogan may have sounded extreme 20 years ago, but it is in keeping with the spirit of the times now. The world buys and throws away clothes at a grotesque pace. Just 500 grams of each tonne of textiles produced is ever sold again. 

AFTUR scours textile sorting plants around Europe along with local secondhand shops and coordinates imports in ways that minimise the environmental impact. Garments are sorted into categories one and two, depending on sales potential. A final category of ‘residual’ garments consists of unfashionable or tattered clothes that would not normally be expected to sell. AFTUR selects clothes from this category, recycles the raw materials and uses them its collections.

AFTUR’s clothes may well have graced exhibitions all over the world and been worn by Icelandic stars like Björk and Of Monsters And Men, but the vision remains local, sustainable production and slow fashion for the good of the environment and humanity.