R-Coat – Alter Regenschirm wird Fashion Piece

Was macht ihr mit euren kaputten Regenschirmen? Wegwerfen? Zum Recyclinghof bringen? Da gibt´s nun eine viel bessere Möglichkeit. Anna Masiello, Italienerin in Portugal, hatte die Idee, diese Regenschirme zu sammeln und daraus Parkas, Jacken und Hüte zu machen. Nach Portugal kam sie für ein Masterstudium in „Environmental Sustainability“, schnell hat sie sich als Zero Waste Influencerin eine beachtliche Community aufgebaut und entdeckte nebenbei kaputte Regenschirme als Ressource. 2018 gründete Anna das Start-up „R-Coat“,  2019 hat sie sich mit der Brasilianerin Yasmin Medeiros zusammengetan, auch sie war für einen Master nach Portugal gekommen, und zwar in Design Management. Gemeinsam entwickeln Anna und Yasmin R-Coat nun weiter. Das Projekt ist durchdacht, sehr klar kommuniziert, Nachhaltigkeit, Transparenz und ein möglichst geschlossener Kreislauf sind Teil der DNA. Über 30 Sammelstellen für kaputte Regenschirme gibt es bereits in Portugal (30) und Italien (2), der Stoff der Schirme wird abgenommen und zu Kleidungsstücken verarbeitet. Jedes Stück ist ein Einzelstück. Frech, bunt und stylisch kommen die R-Coat Designs daher, genäht werden sie von fünf lokalen Schneiderinnen. Und damit die Produkte nicht irgendwann auch auf einer Müllhalde laden, bieten die R-Coat-Macherinnen nach Gebrauch die Rücknahme an.

Anna, with R-Coat you already saved over 1,600 broken umbrellas from waste and transformed them into fashion pieces. How did you come up with this idea?

Anna: My studies in Environmental Sustainability shaped my values and the way I was seeing things. I started living Zero Waste, seeing everything as value and not as trash. One day I was walking around Lisbon when it was raining and I saw all these umbrellas. So many umbrellas! They are not recyclable because they are made out of different materials like plastic, metal, wood and no one takes the time to separate them. So, most umbrellas go to landfill and I didn´t want to accept this. Why not make something beautiful out of them? I bought a sewing machine, though having no experience in sewing, tried to learn the basics with Youtube tutorials and started to do it. The first piece, R-Coat Nr.1, was made of 3 umbrellas. I was so proud of it; people apparently liked what I was doing and I started to set up collection points and continued with my project.

Yasmin: I joined 2019 while doing a Master in Design Management. My background and work experience were in Fashion Marketing but I didn´t like it very much and was looking for a purpose. I met Anna in a workshop and it clicked; soon after that we started to develop R-Coat together, we won some prizes and worked on the business model and the collections during the pandemic.

Anna: I was kind of lost back then because I had no experience at all in fashion, in branding, in marketing and it was not even my interest to be honest. Yasmin was doing her thesis in fashion circularity, so this seemed to be the perfect match.

How is the feedback of your customers?

Yasmin: The feedback is amazing. People write to us how much they like our garments. You have to know, none of us is an experienced fashion designer but we design our pieces ourselves, then a seamstress makes the patterns. Our idea was to surprise people: first they see this cool fashion piece and then they realize that it is made of trash, of broken umbrellas. The material is very good quality, soft and durable.

Sustainability is one of the big trends in the fashion industry today, but there is also a lot of Greenwashing going on. How do you perceive the industry and its progress towards more transparency and sustainability?

Anna: A big part of our project is to contribute to the kind of industry we would wish to see. We want an industry that is transparent and that is proud of its sustainable and social practices. That’s why you find all this information on our website, we want to tell people what’s behind the brand. We also talk about our cost structure because we want to show the real costs behind our pieces, what we pay to our seamstresses for example. We really want to tackle sustainability, it´s so important.

Yasmin: All this is very challenging but we like this challenge. Of course, we are shaping a fashion brand, but R-Coat is a brand with a message inside that we want to share. We kind of work the opposite way conventional fashion brands normally do and we want to be part of the change with a different mindset. It´s important to us to change the consumer behavior and the way people purchase.

Anna: Of course, we want to sell our items to people, people who are already aware of these aspects but also to people who are not aware of them and maybe seeing that we do cool things they might get interested. We would like to create a snowball effect.

How do you dress yourselves?

Anna: We are both passionate about secondhand fashion. And also buy sustainable brands. As soon I started learning about fast fashion, I was not even tempted to buy it anymore, but sometimes I buy secondhand fast fashion.

Yasmin: I am really tall, 1.80 m, and it´s quite difficult for me to buy clothes. So, I started buying (secondhand) clothes and sending them to a seamstress to adjust them to my size. If I like the texture or the colors of the clothes and see a potential, I buy them. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way I wanted it then I sell them, give them to friends or donate them.

Anna: Also important for me are the materials. I much rather go for natural materials to wear. Secondhand and natural is my best option. 

I was reading on your website that you also work with deadstock…

Anna: We use the deadstock for the lining. It comes from a factory in the North of Portugal. So, for example they have 40 meters of blue cotton for us. Then blue cotton it is. The sewing is done in a small atelier outside of Lisbon by a team of 5 seamstresses.

Yasmin: Also, to say is, that we are a community-based brand, without our Umbrella Heroes we couldn´t do what we are doing. They collect the broken umbrellas and give them to us, they are part of our circular business model, they are our stake holders. We want to engage with the consumers so that they become aware of their choice to give something back into the loop or throw it away. And also, to make them understand that we all have the power to change something even with small actions.

R-Coat ist ein richtig cooles Projekt und ein weiteres inspirierendes Beispiel dafür (habt ihr den Post über das Schmuck-Projekt von Eunseok Han schon gelesen?), was man aus Müll alles machen kann. Auf der R-Coat-Website findet ihr weitere Hintergrund-Informationen, alles sehr klar und transparent. Anna und Yasmin haben mir einen Hut geschickt, ich war wirklich überrascht, wie toll sich das Material anfühlt. Ich mag Leo-Print sehr und der flotte Hut wird sicher nicht nur bei Regen zum Einsatz kommen.

Anna und Yasmin arbeiten auch schon an der Weiterentwicklung ihres Projekts. Aus den vielen Metallabfällen der Regenschirme soll Schmuck gemacht werden. Noch sind sie beim tüfteln, nächstes Jahr könnte es klappen mit dem Launch. 

Wer mitmachen, also Umbrella-Hero werden möchte, kann den Stoff seiner kaputten Regenschirme an R-Coat schicken, hier gibt’s Info dazu. Oder vielleicht möchtet ihr ja sogar in Südtirol eine Sammel-Stelle eröffnen? Anna und Yasmin freuen sich über jede Anfrage!

Fotos: (1–7) R-Coat; (8, 9) Susanne Barta