Creativity has long been a way of life for Redcocoon founder Mihiri de Silva. Born in England, she lived in her parents’ homeland of Sri Lanka from the age of five but returned to the UK to study for a design foundation course and thereafter undertake a degree in Textile Technology and Design at the University of Leeds. She later returned to Sri Lanka to put her skills to use in the country’s expanding apparel industry. For the past two decades she has worked as Head of Design for two of Sri Lanka’s foremost garment manufacturers, helping to fashion clothing and underwear for well-known European and US brands including Victoria’s Secret, PINK, Express, M&S, and Intimissimi.
Mihiri’s experience enabled her to channel her creativity in more ways than just design. Part of her role at one point involved managing waste stock, comprising orders that had been paid for but were no longer wanted, items that had manufacturing faults, off-cuts and other unused fabrics and trimmings. This entailed helping find local markets to sell ready-made garments to, designing new items suitable for buyers in India, Australia and the Middle East and making everything from patchwork quilts to duffle bags from off-cuts of fabric that would otherwise have been wasted. She realised, however, that the majority of apparel industry waste was simply being burned or sent to landfill.
It was this that sparked the idea for a company that would re-engineer apparel waste, by creating fashionable and wearable clothes from materials salvaged from the industry’s unwanted material mountain. In 2009, Mihiri was part of the core committee that organized the inaugural Sri Lanka Design Festival, an event attended by buyers, press and environmental specialists from the UK garment industry. This drew Mihiri’s attention to the growing demand in her birthplace for clothes made without harming the environment. And so Redcocoon was born. “I want Redcocoon to engage Sri Lanka’s apparel industry in the process of ‘re-engineering’ its waste into fashionable, wearable pieces of clothing,” she says.
Redcocoon only sources materials from factories certified under the ‘Garments without Guilt’ scheme. This accreditation is awarded to manufacturers that recognize, respect and protect the rights of laborers’ in the Sri Lankan apparel industry.
Redcocoon thus ensures its fabrics are never manufactured using child or forced labour or in factories with discriminatory employment policies. By sourcing its raw materials in this way, and manufacturing clothes in the same factories that produce the salvaged waste, Redcocoon has distinctively shorter lead times from order placement to delivery and also reduces the amount of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning and sending waste to landfill.
Redcocoon is Sri Lanka’s first sustainable fashion label
Redcocoon is the new Green
Interview by Carolyn Fry, award-winning environmental journalist and author
