For more than 25 years, Turkish pop artist Hande Yener has used fashion as part of her public language. Stage costumes, music-video looks and pieces tied to different eras of her career accumulated into an archive that could easily have ended up preserved, catalogued and largely untouched.
Instead, Yener has been asking a different question: what if the clothes kept moving?
That idea sits at the centre of STAR Gene, her Amsterdam-based archive store and fashion project, where selected pieces from Yener’s personal wardrobe sit alongside vintage, rare designer fashion and pre-owned luxury. In an exclusive interview with Unsustainable, Yener describes the project less as an exercise in nostalgia than as an argument for extending the life of clothing through memory, restyling and reuse.
It is a useful counterpoint to one of sustainable fashion’s recurring problems. Circularity is often discussed through restriction: buy less, waste less, consume less. Yener’s version starts somewhere more playful. She wants people to see more possibility in what already exists.
A Wardrobe That Refuses to Become a Museum
Yener does not talk about her archive as a neutral collection of garments. For her, the clothes are bound to memory and identity.
“For me, fashion has never been just about clothes. Every piece in my archive represents a different version of myself, a different era, a feeling, a performance, or a moment in my life.
Some pieces are almost like pages from my personal diary. When I look at them, I remember exactly who I was, what I was feeling, and what I wanted to express at that time.
Of course, there are pieces I could never imagine letting go of. Some are simply too connected to my personal history or to moments that have become part of my artistic identity.
But I also believe that beautiful things are meant to be experienced, not forgotten in a closet. Sometimes, letting go of a piece doesn’t mean losing its story. It means allowing someone else to become part of it.
That’s what I love about STAR Gene. Something that once belonged to my world can become part of someone else’s identity. And I think there is something incredibly beautiful about that.”
Some pieces, she says, are too closely tied to her personal history or artistic identity to leave. Others can be released without losing what made them meaningful in the first place. That distinction matters because STAR Gene is not simply treating an old wardrobe as inventory. It is treating ownership as one chapter in a garment’s life rather than its conclusion.
That notion of a garment carrying a story is more than romantic language. Research into clothing attachment has suggested that meaningful memories and pleasurable use can strengthen a person’s attachment to clothing and potentially postpone disposal. The principle is simple: people tend to care for things they care about.
That connects naturally with Unsustainable‘s earlier exploration of why emotional attachment can make clothing repair matter. Durability is not purely about whether fabric survives washing and wear. It is also about whether a person still wants the garment enough to keep it in use.
What Happens After a Three-Minute Performance?
Celebrity stagewear makes that question unusually vivid. A costume may be designed for a single performance, television appearance or visual era. Considerable creative labour can go into producing something whose most visible purpose lasts only minutes.
Yener says STAR Gene has changed the way she thinks about what comes after that moment.
“I’ve always seen fashion as an extension of my music and my personality. On stage, I don’t just want to wear an outfit. I want to create a moment, an image, something people will remember.
I’ve never been afraid of being different, experimenting, or taking risks with fashion. And that will never change.
But STAR Gene has made me think even more about the life of a garment beyond that one moment.
An outfit might be created for a three-minute performance, but why should its story end after those three minutes?
I love the idea that something dramatic, extravagant, or completely unexpected can be reinvented years later. A stage piece can become a collector’s item, an archive piece can inspire a new design, and something from the past can suddenly feel more relevant than ever.
For me, sustainability should never mean sacrificing creativity. I believe it can actually inspire us to become even more creative.”
She imagines several possible futures. A stage piece might become a collector’s item. An archive piece might inspire a new design. Something highly specific to one era can be reinterpreted years later and feel current again.
That idea fits a wider environmental case for clothing longevity. The UN Environment Programme identifies overproduction and overconsumption as central problems in the textile sector and calls for a shift toward circular business models that keep products and materials in use for longer.
But Yener is careful not to frame longevity as creative austerity.
Circular Fashion as Creativity, Not Restraint
When asked which circular-fashion habit people most underestimate, Yener answers immediately: restyling.
That answer shifts the sustainability conversation away from what people should stop doing and toward what they can do with clothes they already own. Yener talks about mixing unexpected pieces, changing proportions and breaking the assumptions built into an outfit. A dress does not have to keep being worn exactly as it was originally styled. Something elegant can become rebellious. Something vintage can look futuristic.
“Restyling, without a doubt.
I think people often underestimate how much power they already have in their own wardrobes. We live in a world where we’re constantly encouraged to want something new, but sometimes all we really need is a new perspective.
I’ve always loved experimenting with fashion, mixing unexpected pieces, playing with proportions, and creating something completely different from what was originally intended.
A dress doesn’t always have to remain a dress in the way it was first styled. Something elegant can become rebellious. Something vintage can feel futuristic. Something that was forgotten for ten years can suddenly become the most exciting piece in your wardrobe.
Fashion is about imagination, not just consumption.
And I think the most sustainable wardrobe is often the one you never stop being creative with.”
That does not make every form of resale or second-hand consumption automatically sustainable. A 2025 Scientific Reports study found that frequent second-hand shoppers in the United States also tended to buy more new clothing, suggesting that resale can sometimes supplement consumption rather than replace it.
Other life-cycle research still finds real environmental benefits when second-hand purchases replace new garments and those pieces are actually worn. A Journal of Circular Economy study found that second-hand clothing could substantially reduce several environmental impacts per use, but it also warned that a rarely worn second-hand item can perform worse than a durable new garment kept in use for a long time.
In other words, circulation matters, but use matters more. A thriving resale market is not a free pass for endless wardrobe turnover. The stronger idea in Yener’s answers is not simply that an old piece can be sold again. It is that people might become more inventive with clothing before deciding they need something else.
That is also why new and pre-owned fashion do not have to be treated as opposing categories. The environmental value of a garment depends heavily on how it is made, how long it is used and whether another purchase is genuinely avoided.
Can a Garment’s Story Make It Last Longer?
STAR Gene adds another variable to that equation: provenance.
A second-hand jacket can be valued because of its design, condition or label. A jacket from a known performance carries something else too. It has a documented previous life.
Yener believes that knowledge changes the relationship between owner and object.
“Absolutely. I believe clothes can carry emotions, memories, and energy.
When you know the story behind a piece, it becomes much more than an object. It becomes something you feel connected to.
There is a difference between buying a beautiful jacket and knowing that the same jacket was part of a special moment in someone’s life, that it was worn on stage, that it travelled, that it witnessed something unforgettable.
Suddenly, you’re not just buying fashion. You’re becoming the next chapter of its story.
I think that’s what makes archival fashion so special. Its value isn’t always something you can measure with a price tag.
And perhaps when people understand that, they start treating their clothes differently. They take better care of them, they keep them longer, and maybe one day they pass them on with their own memories attached.
I love imagining that a piece from my archive could still be telling stories twenty or thirty years from now.”
She hopes that sense of continuity encourages people to take better care of garments, keep them longer and perhaps eventually pass them on with another layer of memories attached.
There is something particularly interesting here for celebrity fashion. Famous outfits are often treated as artefacts whose value increases when they become untouchable. They are displayed behind glass, preserved in private collections or stored as evidence of a particular cultural moment. Yener is interested in the opposite possibility.
A Second Life Is Not Automatically a Sustainable One
There is still an important distinction between giving individual garments another life and solving fashion’s much larger environmental problems.
UNEP says around 92 million tonnes of textile waste are generated globally each year. It also notes that clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015 while the duration of garment use fell by 36 per cent. Reuse can help prevent an existing product from becoming waste and reduce demand for new production when it genuinely substitutes for a new purchase, but circular fashion still has to contend with the sheer volume of clothing entering the system.
STAR Gene cannot solve that industrial problem, nor does Yener claim that it can. Its value is more cultural. Celebrity wardrobes help shape ideas about novelty, desirability and personal reinvention. If those same wardrobes can make reuse, restyling and longevity feel aspirational, they can push in a different direction.
That is where the project becomes more interesting than a straightforward archive sale. The most useful part of Yener’s message is not that everyone should buy a celebrity’s old clothes. It is that the qualities which make an archive piece desirable, history, individuality, memory and the possibility of reinvention, can exist in ordinary wardrobes too.
Hande Yener’s Version of Sustainable Fashion
Yener does not want STAR Gene to feel like an environmental lesson.
“I want STAR Gene to change the way people think about fashion itself.
I’ve spent so much of my life expressing myself through music, art, and clothing. And one thing I’ve always believed is that style has nothing to do with following rules. It’s about having the courage to be yourself.
With STAR Gene, I want to create a world where fashion isn’t defined by seasons, trends, or how new something is.
I want people to walk into our store in Amsterdam and discover pieces they might never have considered before. Something from another decade, another designer, another life, and suddenly fall in love with it.
I also want to challenge the idea that celebrity fashion belongs only behind glass or in private collections. Fashion should be alive. It should be worn, loved, reinvented, and experienced.
Of course, sustainability is an important part of our philosophy, but I don’t want STAR Gene to feel like a lesson about what people shouldn’t buy.
I want it to feel like an invitation to discover, experiment, and fall in love with fashion all over again.
If STAR Gene inspires someone to see beauty in something that already exists, to be a little more fearless with their style, or to treasure a piece for years instead of weeks, then we’ve created something meaningful.
Because trends come and go, but individuality never goes out of style.”
That may be the project’s clearest contribution to the circular-fashion conversation. Sustainability messaging often struggles when it makes fashion sound like a list of prohibitions. Yener is offering a different emotional proposition: keep the pleasure, keep the experimentation, keep the individualism, but stop assuming that those things require a constant supply of newness.
If someone opens a wardrobe and sees possibility where they previously saw boredom, that is a small change. Across millions of wardrobes, however, small changes in how long clothes stay desirable can affect how quickly they are replaced.
Yener’s hope for STAR Gene is similarly modest and ambitious at once. She wants people to value what already exists, become more fearless in how they wear it and treasure pieces for years instead of weeks.
For an artist whose career has been built around reinvention, there is a pleasing logic to that idea. Reinvention does not always require replacement.
Photography: Aytekin Yalçın