Elise Rolot Design Story

About Elise Rolot:

Elise is a Belgian designer based living in Berlin where she started her upcycled clothing label in 2015. She upcycles second hand materials like curtains, duvet covers, tablecloths and any kind of fabric that can be saved from being thrown away to create unique pieces of clothing. 

Sourcing of materials:

She sources all the fabric herself, biking around the city of Berlin to different thrift stores and flea markets. She is always on the look for new materials and digs into piles of textiles to find amazing curtains or duvet covers. She gives these old, discarded pieces a second life by upcycling them into unique and beautiful garments.

She often works in collaboration with a charity in Berlin that collects textiles and clothes for people in need and buys from them the textiles that they can’t use for their own purpose.

The design process:

She usually has a rough idea of the piece she wants to create but she develops the design further after researching and selecting the fabrics that she is going to use.

Creating products which are upcycled means that the kind of materials that are available to her are constantly changing. She has to adapt the designs depending on the kind of fabrics she can find. For her, this is a real challenge as each new piece of fabric is different from the previous one and needs to be used differently depending on the quality and the possible stains or holes that need to be avoided. But at the same time, she says, that the process is very inspiring, all those changing colors and textures brings up more and more ideas and uniqueness in her designs.

Production:

Once the pattern is ready and the fabric is selected and washed, the production starts in her studio in Berlin. Elise shares the studio with 10 other designers and they run the shop together. All the pieces of the collection are handmade there with a lot of attention to detail.

"Upcycling is a slow process and I chose to work with that concept to step away from the fast fashion industry madness and its negative impact on workers life and the environment."

Design Aesthetic: 

Her focus is on creating only a few designs per year that are independent of the trends of the season and will evolve through the time. Her focus is on the quality of the products, and unlike fast fashion, she creates clothes that are meant to last.  

Additionally she tries to produce as little waste as possible and she uses the fabrics leftovers to make smaller items like headbands and small bags so that nothing gets lost.

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Browse through their FB page here.

Find them on Instagram.

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Photo credit: Elise Rolot