Upcycled Streetwear Designer Joshua Samuels Turns a Hobby Into a Business

While it was a pair of handmade baggy jeans that put upcycle designer Joshua Samuels on the radar of denim and streetwear aficionados, the initial design served a much more personal purpose.

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London-based Samuels set out to make his ideal baggy jeans and, in the process, landed on a style that resonates with others. “For years and years, I couldn’t find an easy way to add enough volume. I wanted my jeans to be so much baggier and I couldn’t find jeans that were baggy enough,” he said. “I would buy 40-inch jeans and belt them so much. It’s so silly.”

Made from vintage Levi’s and the offcuts of other made-to-order garments, the FO Baggy jeans have a tapered hem that gives its unique balloon shape. “I just knew what was wrong with every pair of baggy jeans I’ve ever had. And one of those things is treading all over the hem. But if you taper it in the right way at the ankle, giving it that balloon shape, that won’t happen,” he said. “The jeans will have the same baggy effect, but they’ll stay on your shoe.”

The jeans—and pairs of repurposed Dickies in the same voluminous style—anchor Samuels’ eponymous brand of repurposed apparel. The label—just 18 months young—offers reworked tees, pre-loved knits with appliqués and made-to-order items like the Combo Jacket made from upcycled denim fabric.

While sustainability underpins Samuels’ upcycled designs, it isn’t the main selling factor. “Increasingly, more people care about sustainability. But if you only target people who care about it, you won’t make a big difference. I want people to buy the clothes because they like the clothes and it’s just a nice little bonus that is also sustainable,” he said.

He is interested in making sustainable clothing more affordable, however. “I know that the jeans we sell aren’t the cheapest, but I look at how I can make the jeans the cheapest way,” Samuels said.

Each pair of his jeans is constructed from two pairs of existing jeans. The core—the inseam, crotch and fly—is made from one pair, while the added volume comes from the legs of another. “We have loads of old vintage Levi’s . We don’t need to use more manpower hours to make a new fly. The fly is already made for us. The fly isn’t broken; the fly is fine. We don’t need to do that,” he said. “The pockets are already made. We don’t need to do all that.”

Part of what makes upcycling exciting is what you find inherently will inform what you can make, Samuels added. Most of his T-shirts, sweaters, knits and button-down shirts come from unsold charity shop stock. “Something like 80 percent of charity shop stock in the U.K. doesn’t get sold, and what ends up happening is some of the goes to landfill here, most of it goes to landfill in Africa,” he said.

He also relies on a network of vintage and deadstock suppliers. On eBay Samuels found “a guy in Luton with 20 garages filled with old Levi’s.” He rings him up whenever he runs out of denim. “I go and pull out the first few hundred I can find. Load up the car and say, ‘Thanks mate,’” he said. He uses a lot of Dickies from different vintage suppliers. “I think some of them even come from America because I’ll see a Goodwill tag on them,” he said. “There’s something really fascinating about someone wearing them for work in the U.S., doesn’t want them anymore and somehow they get to a vintage store in the U.K.”

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A true Gen Zer , Samuel is drawn to the nostalgic aspect of fashion. His next collection will be inspired by the life a garment lives before being placed in a lost property box or donated to a thrift store.

From the designer making decisions on its yarn, color and shape to the manufacturer producing it to the retailer that ordered it to the consumer who found something about themselves in the garment… “all these people do different things with that piece of clothing,” he said.

“The owner might just sit at home in it or go to the pub with mates, go out for dinner, see their family, play sports and work in it. It’s done so many different things,” he continued. “And then somewhere along that journey, they’ve decided they don’t need it anymore. Whether they’ve outgrown it, maybe the person who owned it died, maybe they lost loads of weight, maybe they got a little coffee stain on it—whatever it was at some point the connection between this item and the owner just died or broke and they decided to donate it to a charity shop. There’s something really cool about that whole process; it’s like life and death.”

Though always keen on fashion, it wasn’t Samuels’ career goal until recently. As friends went off to university or started jobs and internships after school, Samuels found himself in a “weird spot” unsure of his next step. Simultaneously, the U.K. was going through various periods of lockdown and social distancing. “I was working in pubs. I probably wasn’t in the best place mentally and I was bored,” he said.

Knowing how he liked clothes, one of his mom’s friends offered their old sewing machine, which he went on to learn how to use through YouTube videos. “I realized quite quickly that this is something I could really see myself doing, and it turned from being a hobby into something that I wanted to pursue professionally,” he said.

Samuels now works with two apprentices in his London studio. Instagram is the driver of new customers. “As much as social media is ruining my generation, it’s also really amazing. If I was trying to do this before it, I have no idea how I would have got it off the ground,” he said.

Though he’s excited to see how the brand can grow in the future and make a bigger environmental impact, Samuels said is enjoying where his business is now. “Any of my friends that are more business-orientated will hate that I say this, but I don’t design for a demographic or a target audience,” he said. “I do it very ignorantly like this is what I want, this is what I’m interested in right now. It’s just off blind faith and I hope other people like it too.”

This article was previously published in Rivet magazine .

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