About
We deconstruct and reconstruct post-consumer waste garments and items that have no value in their current form. We value the material and the cost to the environment in the first place. There are enough clothes in existence to last six generations, and more specifically there are more jeans than people in the world, and we offer a better solution than chemical textile recycling.
We set out to celebrate fashion as a people and material centric business, creating clothes that are designed to evolve with the wearer and a last a lifetime.
Anna Foster is Founder and Creative Director of pioneering upcycling brand E.L.V. DENIM. Prior to founding the brand, Anna had been a fashion editor for twenty years at publications such as Exit and i-D Magazine. She then went on to be Fashion Director at Lula, and Fashion Director-at-Large at Australian style title RUSSH before deciding to focus solely on the brand in 2022.
Anna launched E.L.V. DENIM with the sole purpose of only using existing garments to create a 100% upcycled collection. Designing from a point of waste, Anna is committed to revaluing garments that would otherwise be destined for landfill. The collection has grown from denim into a full Ready-To-Wear collection, all manufactured in East London.
Anna’s practices have been widely recognised by the industry, with the brand having been shortlisted for the 2021 and 2022 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, and a recipient of the BFC Fashion Trust Fund for 2021, 2022 and 2024. In March 2022, she won an INNOVATE UK: Women in Innovation Award, which spotlights a diverse group of trailblazing women who are changing the world through the power of their ideas. In 2024, Anna was recognised by Vogue Business and included in the yearly 100 Innovators list.
Anna’s proposal for creating a viable textile sorting infrastructure and textile regeneration was recognised as one that could transform the UK’s textile waste problem into an ‘upcycled textile economy’.
Anna has collaborated with Gabriela Hearst and Hyundai, and has recently pioneered an ‘industry first’ with THE OUTNET. By repurposing years of excess inventory from various brands held by the retail giant, she created a new collection across categories that launched in January 2024. This initiative demonstrated to the wider industry that upcycling can be scaled, surplus stock can be monitised, and new collections can be crafted without the need for new materials.