Sew Be It: Meet Pinky Laing, The Woman Behind Remnant Revolution

Inspired by the women she met on her hospital ward during cancer treatment, Pinky Laing conceived Remnant Revolution, a brand that addresses both the climate crisis and community, says Sarah Langford.

How Remnant Revolution Came To Be

Writing a business proposal from a hospital bed is not the way most people start a new life venture. For Pinky Laing, however, founder of homeware brand Remnant Revolution, this was exactly how her business began.

Treatment for cancer, from which she has now recovered, had forced a three-month period of, as Laing puts it, ‘recalibration and reflection’. She had founded a successful fashion brand making military-style velvet jackets before moving to Germany for a decade of working and raising three children. This was not the homecoming Laing had imagined, but while lying in hospital feeling ‘frustrated and disempowered’ she struck up conversation with the other women on the ward. ‘They were from different backgrounds, some unable to speak English very well,’ Laing says, ‘but a common denominator was that we could all sew.’ Laing had been taught the craft by her grandmother, leading to her lifetime love of fabrics. For some of the other women on the ward, however, sewing represented more than a skill: it was a link to their homelands and heritage.

Pinky Laing, founder Remnant Revolution

The way this shared skill gave a ‘sense of community’ among the women got Laing thinking. She was already increasingly concerned about the climate crisis, and a background in fashion meant she knew first-hand the part the industry had played. ‘One hundred billion garments are produced globally every year,’ Laing says. ‘Ninety-two million tonnes are sent to landfill annually; 35,000 tonnes in the UK alone.’ If the scale seems too large to comprehend, here is another: a rubbish truck of clothing is dumped or burned globally every second.

Recycling has become something of a brand-building exercise within the industry, with many high street names boasting lines using recycled fibres. What is less hyped is the reality that recycling often requires various stages of processing to allow fibres from one garment to be reused in another. Now another word has found its way into the fashion vernacular. ‘Deadstock’ may sound like something on its way to the knackers’ yard, but in the world of fabrics it means what is left unused or wasted on the end of a roll. Laing knew from her previous business how much waste the creation of a garment created. There are, she says, 8,000 fabric warehouses in the UK full of deadstock and ‘seconds’ – usable fabric that is slightly the wrong weave or colour and has been rejected.

She set herself a challenge: build a company which could tackle endemic waste within fashion while upskilling and empowering disenfranchised women, creating the kind of community she had on her ward that came from a love of sewing. From her hospital bed, Remnant Revolution was born.

The business now stocks a range of aprons using patterned and plain fabrics with a signature frill. Leftover scraps become smaller items such as bunting, door stops and make up bags. Each is sewn by a growing army of women found through word of mouth and local notice boards. They come from countries such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, Brazil and South America, bringing their sewing skills with them. Many are refugees whose stories Laing platforms on her website.

Getting The Industry Onboard

In building a company ethos around circular economy, Laing finds herself in good company. A growing number of fashion insiders are also disillusioned enough with the waste endemic in fashion to do something about it. Scottish fashion designer Patrick Grant founded Community Clothing upon similar principles. Formerly a judge on the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee, Grant’s love of timeless craft and frustration with waste informs his clothing line. Pencil cases and pouches are made from the ends of fabric rolls, while deadstock is used for shirts, trousers, outerwear, yarns to make socks. His relationships with UK cloth producers reach as far as the Royal Navy.

The velvet suit is one of Planet Loving Company’s cult buys

Another industry insider, Alex Adamson, describes the accidental creativity that comes from designing around a fabric not a pattern. Her previous company, The Vampire’s Wife, put her on the fashion map. Her new business, Planet Loving Company, was founded with sustainable activist Tabby Taylor. They regularly come across amazing fabric that just ‘demands you make something with it’, such as the surplus material that became the inspiration behind the brand’s bestselling velvet suits. Half of PLC’s collection is now made from deadstock.

Other brands create only from surplus fabric. E.L.V. is the only upcycled denim brand in the world. Its founder, Anna Foster, explains why: ‘Around 20 percent of vintage wholesalers’ denim isn’t sold because of its poor condition.’ E.L.V. ‘jigsaw’ this denim, sewing contrasting colours into new pairs, alongside turning sheets from luxury hotels like London’s The Ned into a range of white shirts. Most of us know by now that jeans are thirsty, but it is stark to see how much water can be saved by doing it differently. ‘Jeans use 10,000 litres of water,’ Foster says, ‘the amount one person drinks in 13 years. Our denim washing process uses just seven.’

Jeans were the choice to lead ‘The Fashion ReModel’ by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, whose work focuses on incorporating the principles of circular economy into product design. Reniera O’Donnell, the Executive Lead, is clear that in fashion ‘circular business models … allow companies to make revenue without making new clothes’.

E.L.V. is the only denim deadstock company in the world | E.L.V. Denim AW25 (c) Sophie Holden, British Fashion Council

Many who are part of this ‘remnant revolution’ would agree with Lavinia Santovetti, whose company, The Materialist, sells more than 40,000 different fabric types in a ‘one-stop-shop to buy, sell and donate deadstock fabrics’, when she says ‘deadstock is rapidly gaining traction across the industry’. Last year alone, Santovetti says, The Materialist rescued and repurposed over one million metres of waste fabric. Nona Source, Last Yarn and Fabric Godmother are other companies all now dedicated to selling deadstock.

But others warn against complacency. Adamson is clear that ‘using surplus materials should not be seen as an excuse for large companies to continue overproduction’. This reality was starkly shown in the ‘What Fuels Fashion?’ 2024 report produced by Fashion Revolution, which concluded that nothing was likely to change until brands disclosed their production volumes and targets. Patricia Barroso, Head of Global Communications and Partnerships, urges us not to think that the battle against overconsumption has been won: ‘We still have evidence of landfills in places like Ghana and Chile filled with unused clothes. The solutions are not big, bold, fast and scalable enough to reduce the environmental degradation we are causing as an industry.’

While there is still much more to do, O’Donnell is hopeful that ‘the transition to a circular economy for fashion is underway’. And with a social mission as strong as their ecological one, brands like Remnant Revolution are proving deadstock has the power to do more than help the planet. Through the upskilling and valuing of the craft of sewing and items created through a strong ethical prism, these types of companies can help transform lives too.

remnantrevolution.co.uk