ReCreate
The ReCreate headquarters are based in New Zealand with their team lead by founding director Erica Gadsby, together with creative director Marielle Van de Ven. Every year they aim to provide even more opportunities within the Dey Tmey community in Cambodia, empowering people to provide for themselves, their families and their futures. It is with your support that they will not only see transformation in the fashion industry, but together, we will transform lives.
The people of Dey Tmey were originally slum dwellers who lived in the capital city of Phnom Penh. In 2007, in efforts to improve tourism in Cambodia, the authorities evicted many slum dwellers into rural sites called relocation areas. One of these areas was Dey Tmey, meaning "New Land". As this relocation area was far from their former jobs and schools, the people quickly found themselves in desperate situations with little opportunity for employment or education. Income was found through prostitution, drugs, washing clothes and selling food. Children were kept home from school to collect rubbish, watch siblings, or in the worst cases sold for slave labour or to brothels. As the years passed and the community developed, opportunities for women to find rightful employment remained scarce. So, in 2013, the ReCreate sewing centre was launched and the first intake of students began their journey of learning a new skill in order to transform their lives.
ReCreate clothing is fully circular. Their circularity model begins with conscious design, using only quality organic and natural fabrics, they eliminate all convenience items such as zippers and trims that are difficult to recycle. The next step is to ReLove and RePair wherever possible — giving their clothing a second life with a new home, or some thoughtful mending.Once a garment finally reaches the end of its life, they ReCycle. Through their new partnership with The Circular Cotton Collective, they utilise a recycling technology that dissolves used organic cotton and other natural fibres into a biodegradable raw material, which is used to make new yarns for fabric production — closing the loop on the garment industry. Finished with your ReCreate items, bring them back into Spacecraft and we'll feed them back into ReCreate's ReCycle programme!
