This Patagonia designer turns worn-out clothes into works of art

Clothes constructed from worn-out garments aren’t most people’s idea of fashion. But that’s exactly what designer Kourtney Morgan has pulled off with Patagonia’s ReCrafted Collection, which launched in November. Under Morgan’s direction, scraps of unusable clothes become one-of-a-kind collectibles. Since 2005, the company has been taking back customers’ used Patagonia items to recycle their fibers; more recently, it has repaired and sold these items on its secondhand marketplace, Worn Wear. But some clothes can be neither recycled nor resold. For ReCrafted, Morgan’s team mimics some of Patagonia’s best-known silhouettes but adds a twist by stitching together scraps from used garments, giving the final product a bricolage-like aesthetic. Patagonia has created 10,000 items so far, and ReCrafted, which is sold on Worn Wear, is profitable. “Clothes can have many lives,” Morgan says. “They don’t ever need to end up in a landfill.”