The ReWeave x Rubelli Collaboration Breathes New Life Into Treasured Textiles
Have you ever wondered what happens to those luxury textile samples and beautiful showroom scraps after the season ends? That’s precisely the question Julie Benniardi and Debbie Ouyang, the co-founders of Los Angeles-based luxury clothing brand ReWeave, asked themselves back in 2018. Over the last five years, they’ve helped redirect top-of-the-line interior design scraps that would've been tossed into landfills and transformed them into custom pieces of fashion, accessories and home decor.
Their newest collaboration with Venetian textile house Rubelli, which debuts on September 27 at the Quintus showroom in West Hollywood, masterfully intertwines the historical elements of beloved fabric with the freshness of LA style that Benniardi, an interior designer by trade, feels is timeless.
“Not just from a design perspective, but the fabric itself will last you a long time.” Benniardi explains. “It’s sustainable in terms of its lifetime.”
For this collaboration, 75% of all of the designs, from elegant coats to statement-worthy jewelry and bags, are constructed using Rubelli fabric. Like all of ReWeave’s collection, each piece is thoughtfully constructed, sewn by hand, and thoroughly original.
Unlike the typical fast fashion that’s become a prominent part of our consumerist culture, the process of creating these wearable works of art takes time. Before construction can even begin, a thorough cleaning process has to be completed with every shipment.
“A lot of the textiles will have staples or tape or other sorts of labels. On larger pieces, the borders will be stitched up, so in order to use the fabric, we unstitch [and remove] everything. That’s just to get started with being able to use the fabric. After that, we’re choosing colors, textures and weights,” Ouyang reveals.
Then the construction process of the garments begins, which Ouyang describes as “choosing a medley of fabrics that will fit into a particular pattern.”
In the collaboration with Rubelli, Ouyang and Benniardi played a lot with the different patterns and textures as well as various sizes of fabric to compose pieces that were carefully crafted to show off the best assets of the fabric.
“We have this wonderful men’s casual shirt that’s out of cotton fabric, but then we have out heavier materials and those go into our Fall/Winter coats” Ouyang explains.
In the five years that ReWeave has been in business, they’ve collected nearly 13,000 pounds of fabric—and there is plenty more to come. ReWeave goes beyond just being an environmentally conscious brand. Sustainability is woven into the fabric of ReWeave's mission with the brand’s focus on maintaining relationships in the industry as well as the Los Angeles community in general. A percentage of profits from ReWeave go to non-profit organizations that help those within the Los Angeles community.
“It takes a village to move a mountain of fabric,” Benniardi shares.
To pick up a one-of-a-kind piece from the ReWeave x Rubelli collaboration, visit select showrooms that collaborate with Rubelli across the country, starting with 45 pieces at the Quintus starting on September 27. The collection will also be shown at Hines & Co. in Washington, D.C. on November 9. This in-person experience allows for customers to interact with the fabric, try on and discover the perfect fit.
Go to reweavela.com for a sneak peek of the collection.
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