Waste Hosiery + Artisanal Upcycling Textile Production

Sans Soucie is dedicated to producing upcycled textiles from waste hosiery, guided by zero waste principles and creative reuse strategies that recognise waste as a valuable material resource and ongoing tool for research.

Our studio began working with waste hosiery (pantyhose) and cast-offs in 2002, when designer Katherine Soucie developed early prototypes during her textile studies at Capilano University in response to witnessing the volume of mill waste generated in everyday production. Since then, Sans Soucie has combined handmade artisanal processes (dyeing, printing, surface design, draping, sewing) with obsolete textile and sewing machinery salvaged from closed factories, treating craft skills as integral in the transformation of waste into new materials and resources within fashion.. This approach honours the history of textile and garment making while keeping traditional applications alive in dialogue with contemporary technology.

From 2002–2019, Soucie undertook long-term applied research to rethink and transform this material resource into new textiles for diverse applications using Canadian-sourced manufacturing waste hosiery.

Zero Waste + Waste Hosiery + Sustainable Surface Design Research

Katherine Soucie established her sustainable textile design research and practice in Vancouver as a student in the Capilano University's Textile Arts Program (2001-2003).  The studio was formed as a result of a proprietary textile upcycling process she developed as a student. Her thesis research was looking at how to create new sustainable textiles and processes through existing technology and textile mill waste.  From this work, her signature upcycled hosiery textile process evolved into an industrial upcycling method, transforming pre-consumer waste hosiery (pantyhose mill waste) from Canadian manufacturers into new textiles, garments, accessories and by-products. Artisanal textile applications and experimental design development, combined with obsolete machinery, low-impact dyes (including a zero waste sequential dye approach) and textile inks, formed the foundation of this upcycling system.

Soucie states, " I am not doing anything new.  I am reimagining the past, giving life to the obsolete and forgotten. I value the skillset and knowledge that has been passed down to me as a maker and as a maker I have a responsibility as to what I put out in the environment. I create new textiles in response to the material waste produced by industry here in Canada and transform modes of production (hand, industrial, digital) into collaborations that allow for past technologies to inform the present. Acting as a guide to creative breakthroughs and new pathways I am constantly researching and developing ways to integrate modern day technology, practices and industry at large to produce hand made textiles in a zero waste manner."   

-- excerpt from Marilyn Wilson's book, Life Outside the Box

Photography: Celine Pinget, Ian Sheh, Rob Matharu, Katherine Soucie