What’s Old Is Shoe Again

Richmond-based house shoe brand Kyrgyz is trying their hand at alchemy. They’re not turning base metals into gold, but their new Capsule Collection The aim of celebrating Earth Month is to recycle waste products to create slippers that are greater than the sum of their parts.

Thanks to a collaborative project between Drexel University and Fabscrap, a nonprofit organization that recycles and reuses textile waste, waste fabrics are being transformed into comfortable, durable slippers.

According to Earth.Org, 2.6 million tons of returned clothing ended up in landfills in the US alone in 2020, and the world generates 92 million tons of textile waste each year—a problem that Barclay Saul, co-founder and president of Kyrgies, is all too aware of. When customers return Kyrgies clothing that can’t be resold for some reason, it goes into the recycling pile, or what Saul calls the “figure out what to do with it pile.”

In August 2023, Saul first began exploring the idea of ​​circular design for Kyrgies, a model in which products are created, repaired and upcycled to achieve zero waste. Looking for a partner who could help Kyrgies realize a concept that would have great appeal for a sustainability-focused brand, Saul came across Fabscrap, which led him to Drexel University.

The team helped establish an independent study course, where Drexel University students were challenged to design an upcycled Kyrgies model using deadstock (unused and/or previous season) materials and trims from Fabscrap. The winning design was by Martin Quinan, whose striped design was produced for a capsule collection that debuted on the Kyrgies website in April in honor of Earth Month. The sandals are made from Kyrgies’ signature felted wool with denim accents on the top of the foot.

“Martin’s design was also an obvious fit because it was reusing denim, which is extremely harmful to the planet and in endless supply,” Sohl says. “Martin seemed like someone who really understood the challenge.”

Kyrgyz was founded and is based in the Richmond area, but is made in Kyrgyzstan, and the company’s commitment to sustainability extends to its employees. The brand manufactures the majority of its products in partnership with Tumar, a women-owned felting collective that employs mostly women and guarantees them a minimum wage. Using traditional techniques of felting, an art form passed down for centuries in Central Asian communities, workers create the brand’s slippers, which are shipped to Kyrgyzstan’s Chesterfield factory.

Now, Sole explains, slippers that end up on the recycling pile have a chance at a second life: “We send them to an atelier in New York called LW Pearl, run by a woman called Laura Weber. Laura and her team apply denim stripes across the upper, a style that Martin came up with from the mountains of recycled denim that Fabscrap supplies,” he says. “We’re basically giving old shoes a new design.”

The result is a collection featuring two durable sandals with reinforced soles for indoor and outdoor use, which launched in early April in a variety of colors and sizes. Each step of the production cycle and the resulting partnerships brings Kyrgyzstan one step closer to the circular design envisioned by Sole.