Versatile Academy #3: The Future of Fashion BusinessVersatile Academy #3: The Future of Fashion Business

Textile waste remains a huge challenge for the fashion industry, with only a small percentage of textiles being reused or recycled locally. At this event, we will discuss this challenge with Peterson + Stoop, a Dutch upcycling brand with innovative shoe designs. They reuse discarded shoes and bring them back to life through creativity.

During the interview, they share their business challenges they have faced, such as scaling up production, finding sustainable funding, and building a brand identity that stays true to their circular mission. Finally, we look back at the past months of Versatile Academy.

This event is part of the third ‘Academy Week’ of Versatile Academy, a program aimed at bridging the gap between small-scale fashion labels and textile sorting and recycling companies. Over six months, four fashion designers are challenged to immerse themselves in the textile sorting and recycling process and rethink how we find, sort, value, and reuse second-hand textiles.

Versatile Academy is an initiative of the Rotterdam-based fashion brand Versatile Forever and is organized in close collaboration with the platform Fashion in Flux. The project is supported by sorting and recycling company Opnieuw Goed, the Creative Industries Fund NL, and the Municipality of Rotterdam.