Adiff: A Dope Sustainable Streetwear Brand Designed to Aid Refugees While Leveraging Waste

Every so often we get to interview an exciting fashion brand and combines sustainable style, cultural impact and functional ingenuity.

Adiff (name originating from phrase “make a difference”)- a female founded fashion brand that utilizes the fashion industry to create aid and awareness around global displacement while promoting circularity and sustainability at the same time. It's impactful streetwear with a cause!

We spoke to co-founder Loulwa Al Saad (co-founded alongside Angela Luna) on this brand that uses design intervention for various global issues while making impactful streetwear. When designing their collections, they identify the key issues that a refugee would face on an everyday basis (ie. warmth and visibility came to mind.) The core of the Adiff collection- revolutionary reflective material designed to aid refugees by enabling them to be visible or invisible while traveling at night- can be seen in their jackets. This resonates in their accessories as well including wearable and stylish backpacks, baseball caps, and crossbody bags. Adiff also has recycled trenches that transform into tents with separate poles. Adiff is also a vertically-integrated manufacturing service based in Athens, Greece.

Check out this exciting interview:

How do you define sustainable?

For us, sustainability is about resilience as a planet. It doesn't just translate to being environmentally friendly with your day-to-day practices or business operations, but also supporting human rights and ethics. In addition to upcycling "waste" materials and using recycled material, we prioritize creating jobs for marginalized communities while providing opportunities for growth. Through our production process, we are eliminating waste from the environment as much as possible in an attempt to preserve the future for the next generations to come.

How are you addressing global issues while promoting circularity + sustainability with Adiff?

Over the last few years, our brand mission has shifted from not just using the physical aspect of clothing through donations, but also leveraging the fashion system as a means to address these issues. We prioritize using post-consumer fashion "waste" as the raw material to create our collections, and produce our garments at our own sewing facility in Athens, Greece, that ethically employs resettled refugees. Through our upcycling of these materials, we are extending the life cycle of the garment and closing the fashion loop.

Does being a Woman of color impact your brand and your overall work in contextualizing sustainability? If so how?

As a brand, we always try to pass the mic to minorities. The refugee community is one that has been overshadowed, and is the direct community we consistently try to positively impact and shed light on. Oftentimes the connection between climate change and global displacement is overlooked, when really climate change has only added to the crisis, and fashion has further contributed to climate change. When looking to support this community of refugees, the connections between these critical global issues help us put sustainability at the forefront of the business.

What are you and Angela's goals for the future of this brand?

Our goal with ADIFF is to make a difference in the world using both product- and systems-based design. We believe it's the unexpected mediums like fashion that can really generate the most change, because they're undersaturated with impactful messaging, so it's much easier to be heard. We aspire to create awareness and lead crucial conversations among consumers, while also applying systems design to provide actionable solutions to global issues.