Up-fuse

Yara Yassin, Rania Rafie, and Lama El Khawanky founded Up-fuse in Cairo in 2013, building the label around a material logic rather than an aesthetic one: plastic bags, rPET bottles, car tires, and scrap denim get processed into carries and clothing before they reach landfill. Three million plastic bags and two million bottles recycled since 2015 are counts, not marketing copy. The range is wider than most material-led labels allow themselves — lunch bags alongside embroidered asymmetrical shirts, denim alongside tire rubber — which keeps the offering democratic rather than precious. Collaborations with Adidas and Vodafone confirm industrial-scale capability. The interesting tension is whether the clothing line, still modest in depth, can hold the same material rigour the bags have already demonstrated.