No Bull Cause

The design process started with lots of research, talking to clothing recyclers, target demographics and lots of practical work. I worked with Into Carry, After ANZ, Grapevine, Perks & Mini, Nina Gbor,  FB Ideas and Homie to address as many elements of sustainable design as possible. These practical connections allowed me to learn and pin point exactly what niche No Bull Cause should fill and how it can have the biggest impact. I wanted the designs on the clothing to be grounded and never shy away from their origins.

The No Bull Cause intercepts unwanted clothing  from the waste stream. It was very important to not put more pollutants onto the clothes, all dyes, labels and inks are water based or made from natural fibres, the embellishments, even the screen prints can be removed to refresh the garment when the customer wants new designs. This ensures the circularity of the product. The new designs on the clothes utilise many mediums, from 3D LiDAR scanning, to illustration, 3D modelling and photography, all designs reference trash and waste in some way, changing relationships with waste.

The capstone project won "Best Capstone" and the "Community Leadership Award" at RMIT before winning two awards at AGDA and receiving bronze at the World Brand Design Society before getting major funding from FB Ideas where the project is now a real-world business and inhabits a 4,000 square foot warehouse.

The fashion industry generates over 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year — about a truckload of clothes sent to landfill every second. People now buy 60% more clothes than 15 years ago, but wear them for only half as long. Boredom and fast-changing trends drive this throwaway culture, especially in streetwear, where limited drops fuel constant turnover. While better durability can help, fashion is built on self-expression: designers creating, consumers connecting. Building a brand and a trend requires consistency.

Upcycling can reduce waste, but because clothes are so personal, supply will always be unpredictable. No Bull Cause asks the question: can self-expression be sustainable? Using design to present and test solutions to the fashion waste problem is at the core of the concept, sharing these findings with the rest of the circular design community is the best way to solve the problems we face.

No Bull Cause champions design-led solutions, collaboration and impact over profit. The products produced not only exhibit design excellence in their process and application, they also show excellence in ethical business practise. The project shows that self-expression can be sustainable by doing something very hard in product and service design, making something new without producing new pollution and waste.

The most innovative parts of No Bull Cause is its ability for customisation and fast turn around for its customers. It invites people with clothes they’ve grown tired of to visit pop-up shops, where new designs can be silkscreened on the spot. Customers can walk away with a fresh design in minutes. Like a tattoo parlour for clothes, each design adds value with every layer of history to the life of the garment.

This unique business model means repeat customers, a viable business model and is more sustainable than any other clothing brand currently available. Designs are all individual too, this creates rarity and in turn, value. Transforming trash into treasure. While hype culture, the phenomenon where products are intentionally released in limited quantities, is associated with overconsumption, overproduction killed many hype brands. When people lined up to buy latest releases, they made in-person connections catalysed by their connection to meaningful design. This incentivised designers to continue crafting high-quality work. Over time, however, the market was saturated. New clothes and collections dropped every two weeks. The experience moved online, and eventually, the people buying them didn’t care about stories or craft, but were simply the ones what could afford them. Vintage is in because good quality is now rare. It is very difficult to find clothes that are made well and made without plastic, even among high-end brands.

The No Bull Case creates genuine scarcity and value because it is your clothes, made for you. It’s always a perfect fit because it is the one you already have. Since designs are silkscreened by hand, and your wardrobe is so deeply personal, everything we produce are affordable, one-off pieces. Many makers and supporters of design are very empathic and care about the environment. The No Bull Cause allows for sustainable self-expression.

Fashion is a form of storytelling, and creative self-expression is part of what makes us human. Designers express themselves by creating work, and consumers express themselves by wearing clothes that resonate with them. Since fashion is deeply personal—and even best when tailored to our bodies—the number of unique items (SKUs using inventory terms) is practically infinite. This makes many circular economy models in fashion, like renting, repair, and recycling, difficult to execute or scale profitably. Expecting otherwise is asking everyone to wear uniforms.

The No Bull Cause allows self-expression and community-building among designers and consumers without creating waste by hosting workshops and sharing up-cycling knowledge with a wide audience. Because of the production process, No Bull cause was trialed in the UK as a franchising concept, intercepting the fashion waste stream in the UK. The exclusive UK designs were featured at the Exeter City Fashion Show.

As a resident of the Fisherman’s Bend Circular Design Collective, the brand has already had a handful of collaborations with artists and designers, driving work opportunities for local creatives. In collaboration with ANZ Clothing, No Bull silkscreened donated secondhand clothes to show what’s possible with previously unusable garments, transforming them into gallery pieces.  To keep inventory lean, inventory is only replenished when running low, which makes logistics of pop-up shops easy and keeps designs fresh.

Some customers have also come back to add new designs to clothes we sold to them before. While the No Bull Cause is under a year old, it has demonstrated a model for sustainable self- expression, that a clothing brand can create without creating new clothes

No Bull Cause exemplifies excellence in circular and sustainable design by transforming fashion waste into desirable streetwear, challenging traditional consumption patterns, and embedding sustainability into every facet of its operation. It showcases how circular and sustainable design principles can be effectively integrated into fashion, turning waste into wearable art and inspiring a shift towards more responsible consumption by the designers and consumers.