080 Reborn: making second-hand clothes take fashion’s center stage

080 Barcelona Fashion, the Catalan capital's own fashion week, will be hosting for the third time '080 Reborn', a collection created with second-hand clothes.  

All of the looks on the runway have been styled with garments recovered from textile waste classification plants and second-hand shops. 

The aim is to demonstrate that fashion can be built not only with newly produced garments but also with pre-used ones, emphasizing that reutilization extends the life of textiles and reduces the environmental impacts of new production. 

Fermin+Gilles are two stylists based in Barcelona and Paris, and they have been in charge of styling this second-hand collection for two years.  

In the week leading up to the show, they were putting the final details together in their atelier in Barcelona for a collection inspired by four significant moments in history. 

"For this catwalk, we thought of four countercultures that marked important moments in human history that we wanted to showcase through fashion," Fermin Serret, one of the stylists, explained to Catalan News. 

They drew inspiration from the French Revolution, Chinese counterculture during the Cultural Revolution, the punk movement in the United Kingdom, and the protests that took place in Soweto, South Africa, in 1976. 

Challenges and opportunities 

Working with second-hand clothes provides the opportunity to discover exceptional pieces to style: "Sometimes we find garments that are truly unique, and we hadn't initially considered them, but they help inspire a look," Gilles said. 

"However, at other times, we look for a specific piece for an outfit and can never find it," he added. 

The South African-inspired looks of the collection posed more challenges in sourcing second-hand clothes: "We had to go to Paris, where there is a larger African community, which is reflected in the second-hand shops and markets that we couldn't find in Barcelona," Fermin explained.  

"Working with reused clothes obviously has advantages and disadvantages, but wearing second-hand garments allows you to build your own style with unique pieces," Gilles emphasized. 

There is also the option of upcycling and customizing: turning a dress into a skirt or adding personal touches to a shirt.  

For a punk look, Fermin and Gilles used various buttons they found in Barcelona’s Encants flea market to personalize a blazer: "Anything can work to give an item a twist.” 

The runway will have 31 looks for 31 different models, both men and women, with different sizes.