A.W.E
Some things are inherently sexy.
A cold beer after a long day in the mountains. Sand underfoot after a brutal day in the office. Chilled wine at a quiet street cafe during a hot summer evening. The former are all immediately emotive, sense tickling sentences.
But sustainability? We can agree that as a concept, it doesn’t rouse many a rosy thought. And why would it? From your mom making you separate your recycling as a kid to the never ending greenwashing you’re fed through the cocktail of your favourite media outlets’ talking heads, to sustainable automobile manufacturers’ highly orthopaedic design language, it’s objectively difficult to hold sustainability and sexiness in the same regard.
American Waste Enterprise is here to test that boundary. A first of its kind apparel concept that breathes new life into old garments at a huge scale, A.W.E. is here to shift the landscape around the apparel manufacturing crisis. But first? A bit of history.
With his family immigrating to Los Angeles from South Africa in the late 1980’s, Errol Kaplan began his journey within the vintage clothing market servicing L.A’s laundry list of vintage flea markets, including the highly lauded Rose Bowl Flea, a once monthly event that has patrons flocking to Pasadena in droves at 6 AM for their chance to score “the best stuff”. As with any snowball, once it begins rolling downhill… well he looked up 30 years later and his flea market pop-ups had turned into American Recycled Clothing, one of the world’s preeminent vintage wholesalers. Customers come to A.R.C. from far and wide looking for everything from era specific leather jackets to sun dresses to resell at a premium, and the business has turned into a full on family affair with Errol’s son Ricky now taking up the helm.
A few years ago, people started asking Ricky if they could buy blank garments in bulk, which got him thinking… Is there a way to turn the secondhand blank clothes that come through his warehouse into another high volume business?
And thus American Waste Enterprise was born. Ricky, streetwear aficionado Gavin Dogan and Creative Mastermind Mark Gainor combined their decades of apparel experience and began toiling away at a system of grading blank garments. It’s widely regarded that there are enough clothes on earth to dress the next 6 generations of people. Having contributed to the apparel manufacturing crisis first hand, Mark, Ricky and Gavin had all seen the belly of the beast and were ready to incite change.
As trends fade and waistlines balloon (or shrink, we’re looking at you Ozempic), a huge percentage of American’s apparel consumption winds up getting donated through channels like Goodwill and Salvation Army, and those businesses simply don’t have the square footage to sell all those garments. The items that don’t hit their retail floors get bound into 1000lb packs and sold as a commodity on the open market.
When A.W.E. gets 1000 lbs of blank clothes, they open it and immediately begin sorting it into raw colors like navy, red and heather grey. Those items then head to an industrial laundry, where upon their return they are quality controlled, sorted into A.W.E’s size grade and banked to be sold via wholesale and retail channels.
And what happens to the off colors? Well the pinks, yellows, baby blues etc get overdyed into consistent color sets, leaving no meat on the bone and creating usable, standardized inventory at scale.
Right now A.W.E offers t-shirts, pocket t-shirts and crewneck fleece in bulk, but after visiting their showroom in Gardena you can see that the ball is already rolling downhill. Re-worked flannels, union dyed graphic tees and Afterhoods fill the racks, proving that they are looking over the cliff in terms of what is possible via secondhand fashion.
After learning of the A.W.E. program we too wanted to LIVE IN A.W.E. So we cooked up a range of graphics which they had printed for us in L.A. With each piece being a true 1/1 item, they’ve already been flying off the shelves of our small French boutique.
And as for sex appeal? From Princess Diana’s iconic rotation of crewneck sweatshirts to James Deen’s white tee rotation, there is no denying the foundational basics of our wardrobe can create immense sex appeal. So if you drive a gas car and sometimes drink from plastic water bottles, you can now offset your footprint by refreshing your spring wardrobe with true vintage pieces.
You can shop the Wasted Talent x A.W.E. range instore now via Wasted Talent Boutique.
Click here to shop from American Waste Enterprise.
