Fashion is large and fashion is everywhere.
An all-consuming concept, fashion does for its consumers what they do for it — it gives and gives as long as it’s asked for. As clothing transformed into fashion — from a purely functional or symbolic utility to a dynamic, visible language of change, status, and identity — its consumption too turned into over-consumption. Perhaps for the layperson, like you and I, it’s challenging to define when this took place, but the reality remains — all that we use and all that we discard never goes away, it simply goes elsewhere.
It’s difficult to accept that the things that bring us joy, gratification, or even just satisfaction, are best contained in moderation. While fashion is a means of expression for many, it’s imperative to look at larger systems that run it — the foremost being capitalism. We’re convinced that more is better — that it’s a game of collections, options, trends. In Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer says, “In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognising abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.” She traces how contentment and gratitude challenge the dominant economic model, which thrives by ensuring people always feel they lack something. And in fashion, the need for something ‘special’ is often replaced with more — but in 2025, circularity as a virtue allows us to believe otherwise.
Rkive City, a brand that re-maps garments — finding its footing in strength in research — creates waves not just through their pieces, but also their thought ecosystem around their work. It’s not so much about being a forerunner in the industry as it is about being at the fore of the cause — all helmed by founder Ritwik Khanna. “Circularity, to us, is less of a rigid system and more of a way of being. As a system, it’s about how materials move: how a garment lives, returns, and re-enters the cycle. But as a mindset, it’s about practicing patience, attention, and care. Circularity challenges the speed and disposability that dominate fashion. It’s about creating things with the intention that they’ll come back to you for repair, for reinvention, for rethinking,” says the team.
Corners of Rkive City
But circularity can easily be described in several ways: Mckinsey & Company describe it as “practices that optimise resource use and minimise waste across the entire production and consumption cycle, emphasising sustainability and economic efficiency ” — a distant understanding for those who live within the systems. How can we understand it better as a thought process, closer to the action on ground and amongst people?
Ustat Kharbanda’s Duja — meaning ‘second’ in Punjabi — finds its definition in beauty. She says, “Duja is a space for exploring and experimenting with the imperfections and creating each piece that has a story and an intention. It comes to us with a design and ethical mindset that we believe in slow, conscious creation and in empowering others to participate in this process. We build on individuality, play and purpose.” Duja is fresh. It’s a brand that prioritises edge but revels more in its creativity of repurposing. Here, value across culture and emotion compounds. “For me it’s making each garment unique from existing material — it feels more personal and it naturally slows down the process. Circularity gives us a purpose. It reminds us that fashion is about being expressive, rather than wasteful,” Ustat says.
In 2025, it may not even be awareness that’s the issue in the urban markets — we know about the staggering consumption, waste filling our landfills, greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, relentless water wastage and pollution, and so much more. Singular ‘solutions’ find their way to the consumers in lesser consumption or premium ‘sustainable’ clothing.
1: Ustat Kharbanda, founder, Duja; 2: Ritwik Khanna, founder, Rkive City
But circularity, at its most human, is not a system of reusing or recycling but a quiet philosophy of continuity — a way of honouring what already exists by letting it live again, in new forms, with renewed purpose.
Two Extra Lives by Aanchal Notani is a Mumbai-based brand following just that. “Fashion at Two Extra Lives is only existing because through fashion, I want to redirect people to what they’re not paying attention to. I want to be a mirror to society. I want to tell them that fashion is the last thing that they need to care about. There is no other way I could tell them that if I was an environmentalist or an activist — I would barely make any sound,” Aanchal says. The brand’s name is a play on a popular saying from the gaming community in the early 2000s, “Video games ruined my life. Good thing I have two more.” Aanchal wants to emphasise this sarcasm — “You don’t have two extra lives, so don’t live like you do.” She says she is a “little human being” trying to do a lot — but if it’s just for 10 people, who knows what those ten will do? “Even if they can create a little bit of a chain and make other people aware of how they can use their capital and evolve differently. I feel like only and only capitalists can do this — people who have money, people who have power — can make a difference,” she says.
In reaching our most basic facets as humans — from empathy to motivation — circularity prioritises us as creatures of memory. It’s preservation like no other — no sterile storage or sealed perfection, but a living continuity where every frayed seam or fading dye carries traces of someone’s touch, someone’s time. Circularity then becomes an act of remembering: holding space for what was, honouring it as it is, and letting it become something new without erasing its past.
1: At Two Extra Lives each piece carries intention, memory, and a touch of satire; 2: Agustina Ros’s gold glass statement ring crowns the Ambar Fiorenza hand warmers
Rkive City places these memories front and centre: “Memory is one of our core materials. When we pick up a post-consumer garment, an old shirt, a pair of jeans, we’re not just working with fabric. We’re working with time. A stain, a repair, a fading label — all of these become part of the storytelling. Instead of hiding them, we often preserve or highlight them. This isn’t just aesthetic, it’s ethical. Memory becomes a design tool — in a world obsessed with the new, there’s something grounding about making room for the old.” And Duja echoes the thought: “These materials carry layers of emotion and meaning that new fabrics cannot replicate. We reconstruct them with intention and care.”
Brands, consumers, and the industry at large are ever-evolving — in response to the world and its order, and now, to fleeting trends delivering gratification via our phone screens. But is outstanding design worth it if they aren’t looking at the bigger picture? Aanchal would perhaps look past them: “If you haven’t thought about how you’re contributing to the environment, how you’re saving as much as you can, how you’re not just getting more new materials and using them, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about just creation anymore or how cool you are as a brand. It’s about how we evolve differently.”
It might even be that circularity in fashion is not simply about fashion, but what we choose and omit value from. Rkive’s plans are to tackle a larger picture where systems are fixed from the inside out. “We’ve realised that to truly be circular, we can’t just remake clothes. We have to remake systems. Rkive is now building frameworks for repair and remanufacturing all from post-consumer waste. Over the next few years, we’re looking at scaling this thinking through partnerships, giving other brands, both large and small, access to these systems,” the team says. And to Ustat and Aanchal, both, this is a seemingly understood concept: clothes are perhaps just the beginning. Duja and Two Extra Lives, too, stand for much larger conversations — those of human ways of living, creative solutions in response to the world, and a future we are all eager to reform.
1: Aanchal Notani, founder, Two Extra Lives; 2: Behen twin pants — carrying the first memory of the sea of two twin grandmothers, captured through Jorge Barros’ lens and screen printed on linen
Clothes are never just clothes. For some, they are protection, and for others, perhaps an expression of identity. And as much as it can, circularity aims to maintain these attachments — it’s not all black and white here. Our very systemic challenges can be addressed through what we hold dear.
Braiding Sweetgrass is about indigenous living, but it leaves us with extraordinary wisdom for centuries to come. Kimmerer also stated in the book, “All flourishing is mutual.” What thrives does so in relationships — between us and the planet, our systems and our individuality, or even the designer and the wearer.
Words by Meghna Mathew
Photographs by Anush S Kumar, Aswin Sumesh, and Rahul Baghel
