Luxury fashion brand Story Wear is on a mission – pioneering a new age of luxury through its zero waste and upcycled designs made with 100% recycled materials. Recently awarded the prestigious Butterfly Mark, not only does Story Wear source and manufacture locally, it is also determined to reduce inequality through employing socially disadvantaged women and helping bring together all segments of society in Taiwan. Speaking exclusively to Positive Luxury, founder Kuan Chen reveals the meaning behind ‘upcycled design with social impact’, her insights on leadership and the greatest sustainability challenges she anticipates to face in the future.
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Hi Kuan! When did you begin working at Story Wear and how long have you been in this leadership role?
Well, I founded Story Wear in 2018, so we are now into our sixth year of trading. We actually started as a Chinese-language sustainable fashion blog and it took us about a year for the business model behind Story Wear to really take shape.
What three things do you think make a great leader?
The three things that I continue to work on as a leader are: communicating a clear vision, being compassionate, and fostering a workplace culture underpinned by mutual respect.
What three things would the people around you say make you a great leader?
I’ve never really asked, and hopefully the three things above! I think to most people, I come across as determined, hardworking, and easy to work with.
What is the toughest lesson you learnt?
How to keep going when so many people doubt you, people have said ‘sustainable fashion is not “real” fashion’, ‘Story Wear cannot scale up’, ‘Story Wear cannot make a profit’, etc. Well, I am glad to say that we have proven our doubters wrong!
What do you believe are the greatest sustainability related challenges for Story Wear?
That there is endless fashion waste for us to upcycle. This might sound counterintuitive, but we genuinely want to eradicate fashion waste, which right now just seems impossible unless sustainable fashion becomes mainstream fashion.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your motto of ‘upcycled design with social impact’?
We founded and built Story Wear as a social enterprise, which for us means that apart from making fashion more sustainably, we also want to give back to our community, particularly by creating fair work and income for the underprivileged.
Apart from using upcycled materials and deadstock within your designs, does Story Wear have any further innovative initiatives planned for future collections?
We have previously worked with yarns produced from recycled PET bottles and are looking into incorporating sustainable textiles into our production, as well as exploring collaboration with fashion tech to improve fabric archiving and traceability.
