In February, the French low-impact clothing brand Faguo will launch several thousand T-shirts and a sweatshirt produced by Losanje, a specialist in the industrialisation of upcycling for clothing and accessories.

For this series, Faguo has opted to produce Lugny T-shirts, featuring the brand’s tree logo on the chest, along with the Dirac hooded sweatshirt. The former, available in blue and dark green, is priced at €60, while the latter, in blue, costs €105. The pieces were made from garments collected at sorting centres in France and across Europe, then cut and assembled by Faguo’s teams.

“We felt it was important to choose our iconic pieces for this collaboration, to help shift perceptions of upcycling,” Anaïs Barry, Losanje’s marketing and communications director, tells FashionNetwork.com. “Our aim is always to dress people with the smallest possible environmental impact. With upcycling, we reduce that impact by a further 90% compared with a standard Faguo garment. But we’re also counting on the pieces appealing in their own right as products.”

For Losanje, the stakes are high. The French company, whose aim is to prove that upcycling can be an industrial alternative to producing new clothes, has delivered what could be, in Europe and worldwide, the first 100% upcycled collection produced in several thousand unique pieces, according to Simon Peyronnaud, president and co-founder of Losanje.

“We’ve already released drops with brands such as Miu Miu and Marine Serre, collaborations that involved dozens or hundreds of pieces,” explains the executive. “This time, we’re looking at genuine repeatability. It’s been a highly instructive collaboration, and one we have high expectations for, to demonstrate that we can source existing materials here at home rather than from cotton fields.”

Losanje claims to have reused over 320 tonnes of textile products in five years via upcycling, through collaborations with the SNCF, La Poste, the Comité Paris 2024 and Roland-Garros, among others. To support its growth, the company recently inaugurated a new factory in Nevers, in the Nièvre department.

“We’re moving from a 700-square-metre industrial workshop to a real 2,500-square-metre factory, purpose-built to take us to the next level,” explains Simon Peyronnaud, whose company currently employs 25 people. He hints at several ongoing projects with brands and groups keen to invest in an upcycled offering.