Dom Amsterdam

Upcycling and corporate social responsibility

Dom collects used materials and makes them fashionable. They contact companies to see if they have any leftovers in their production process: all kinds of fabrics, clothing, old curtains and industrial rolls. Dom is building a network of friends, family and business relations to get more and more waste. Then they look for the materials that are useful to them from everything they have collected. After selection they try all the substances they can no longer use, they try to give them a new use. The design process starts with the usable substance matching colours and prints together. Once a new collection has been created, Dom brings them to their producers at the Makers Unite foundation. Makers Unite is a foundation founded to offer refugees a next step in their lives. They work together with talented refugees in Amsterdam. In this way Dom helps refugees in the Netherlands to participate in the Dutch labour market. Some of the bags are made of organic cotton, but there are also bags made of ordinary cotton or hemp. However, most hip bags are made of upcycled fabrics.

Also sustainable transport

They consciously chose a local producer in order to be as closely involved as possible in the production process, thereby minimising the adverse effects of transport. Diede and Zheng Ou use public transport for all transports: to bring materials to the factory, to go from factory to office, to bring products to the shops…

Fashion has always been their passion. Sustainability has long been very important to Diede and Zheng Ou. In 2017 they had the idea to combine them and they started Dom Amsterdam with one very clear vision: everything has to be as sustainable as possible. They find most sustainable fashion brands very basic and want to change that image by creating hip and fresh alternatives. According to them, sustainability in fashion is improving, but they still think that there isn’t enough choice for the customers. According to them, this is because it is really difficult for the small sustainable fashion brands to compete with the large established brands. Luckily just like COSH! they notice that more and more customers are becoming aware of sustainability.