Making a Statement by Upcycling with WearEmOutTees Owner Camille Lee

“I cannot fix the fast fashion crisis, but what I can do is interrupt a small piece of it.” We love a good statement tee, but novelty t-shirts are flooding the waste stream. 15 million discarded novelty tees are imported to Ghana each month alone, 40% of which ends up being landfilled, incinerated, or dumped into the ocean. When you consider that it takes approximately 713 gallons of water to make a single brand-new t-shirt, it’s crazy that we are making so many that are worn once and then tossed into the trash. Camille Lee’s brand WearEmOutTees designs statement t-shirts by upcycling secondhand blank tees instead of working with virgin resources. Camille shares her journey from working in fashion retail to becoming a circular fashion advocate, how thrifting changed her relationship with clothing, and how she’s doing what she can to disrupt the fast fashion industry with her small business. For show notes visit: https://www.swapsociety.co/pages/podcast