We are Jutta Meisen and Faraaz Sedaghati and we founded the upcycling studio Nou.Niss 2022. I, Jutta, am a fashion designer and have been involved in sustainability and upcycling for more than 6 years. My colleague Faraaz is trained in arts and crafts and also studied fashion design. We are motivated to be part of the change in the fashion industry. We believe that clothing should be kept in the use cycle for as long as possible. That's why we pick up discarded pieces and make sure they can be reintroduced back into the cycle. We are also part of the Alterist community, an online marketplace for upcycling designers. Our priority is to be sustainable and salvage garments as often as possible. We offer some workshops for our customers, so everyone has the chance to make their garment unique. We are also currently working on building our own online store where customers can buy our beautiful unique pieces. Until this is ready, we will sell through Alterist.com.

Worldwide, only 2-4% of clothing is actually resold in recycling facilities. Most donated textiles are excluded from sale due to defects and damage and exported abroad, shredded or incinerated. I came to this realization while working on my bachelor's degree collection, which created the "mother piece" of our current designs. With Nou.Niss we now want to counteract this trend and give a second life to more garments that are sorted out in recycling plants!

Upcycling wool knitwear like sweaters, jackets and tops

We specialize in Visible Mending and Minimal Waste Design. We especially like to rescue and repair wool knitwear that contains a maximum of 30% synthetic fibers. Shrunken sweaters, cardigans with stains or scarves with moth holes made out of virgin wool, cashmere or merino are our favorite repairs. We cover the damaged areas with our loving hand embroidery, using wool yarns from deadstock.

We have no preferences as to which brands we prefer to upcycle. But it is important to us that we work mostly with natural materials to avoid the abrasion of microplastics. Among the brands we get to rescue from our partner company, the Recyclingbörse Herford, are often March, Brax, Marie Lund or even Joop.

Nou.Niss is Persian, Faraaz's mother tongue, and means "it's not new". This means that upcycling means upgrading, as the garments become even more unique than before. Anyone can buy the original, but your repaired garment will not exist twice in the world.

Audiobooks, especially Harry Potter or sometimes a Disney movie in the background.

"Not new, but valuable" is our motto for our new collection. We want to make old clothes unique and more valuable.