The Art of Giving Old Shirts New Life: A Conversation with Caroline Dickinson
Caroline Dickinson believes the future of fashion can be found in pieces with a past. By hand-printing pre-loved cotton and denim shirts, she transforms everyday wardrobe staples into unique pieces designed to be loved, worn and treasured for years to come. We sat down with Caroline to explore the inspiration behind her brand, her making process, and how she gives old shirts a beautiful second life.
For anyone discovering your work for the first time, how would you describe your brand and the pieces you create?
My focus is utilising what already exists. Creating small, curated collections of pre-loved menswear shirts, cotton and denim, and hand printing them to transform each piece, giving it a new lease of life. I love creating pieces that feel special and unique but that are still timeless and versatile to be worn every day and mix and match with what already exists in your wardrobe. For me, sustainability isn’t just reusing existing garments, it’s also about creating pieces that people love, brings them joy, makes them feel confident, and they want to keep wearing it again and again.
Your print work is such a defining part of what you do - how did you first begin experimenting with hand-printing on shirts?
I’ve always been a screen printer but after working as a commercial print designer for high street brands for so many years, where everything gets done digitally, getting back into using screen printing and really showcasing a traditional printing method was a huge part of the brand for me. The shirt element happened very naturally. I spend a lot of my time in jeans and shirts and so did my mum when I was growing up, it’s a classic, timeless wardrobe piece. I love ferreting around vintage shops and markets for beautiful shirts with interesting details and so it just felt like a natural step for me to utilise them and it’s grown from that.
Screen printing is also more interesting when there is a challenge or something that makes it irregular as you have to problem solve as you go along and hand printing over an existing shirt, rather than flat fabric, always throws in some curve balls.
What initially drew you to working with existing materials rather than starting from scratch?
Coming from a background of working in fast fashion before I started the brand, I really got to experience how fast and throw away the industry is. It made me focus on looking at what already exists and how pre-loved garments can be utilised. I’ve always loved vintage shopping and the allure of finding that one of a kind gem. There is so much luxury in owning a garment that no one else has and a piece that has had a whole life before it came to you. It’s exciting being able to give all these pre-loved shirts a totally new lease of life and transformation.
Could you talk us through your process a little - from sourcing the shirts to transforming them?
I hand pick every shirt which then must be washed to make sure it’s a clean blank canvas for printing. Any oils, stains etc can stop the dye paste from working so prepping the shirts properly with a good clean is so important. Before I take any of the shirts into the print room I always try on each one to make decisions on how the shirt should be printed and if it would benefit from any length adjustments or cropping. I double check the collar and cuffs, these can be the first things to look worn on pre-loved shirts and if they’re not in a good condition, they get saved for collarless styles. I always want to be open to adjusting the style of the shirt depending on any faults or imperfections, I never want any shirt to go to waste.
I print each shirt individually front and back. The cotton stripes are printed with a dye paste, which means once the finishing process is done the colour is set into the fibres and you can’t feel the printed shape on the fabric. The denim gets printed with a pigment paste, like how a t-shirt would be printed. Unlike the dye on the cotton stripes, you can feel it slightly on the surface of the denim but due to the thicker and hardwearing nature of the fabric, the pigment doesn’t change the drape, flow or feel of the garment.
What do you look for in a pre-loved shirt?
The first thing I look for is if the shirt is 100% cotton. The dyes I work with only fix to 100% cotton fibres and so that element is so important, otherwise I can’t use the shirt. The quality of the cotton is also important, mainly due to the dye and printing process, but also the feel of the shirt for the customer. I’ve been sourcing for so long now, I have a list of brands I like to find as I know the quality of the cotton is great and they’ll print well and I get no nasty surprises during the process.
I’m also particular with the colours I source. I like each collection to feel curated with a certain colour palette that flows, but colours that still feel timeless and won’t date.
It’s so special that every shirt has its own name - what inspires the names you choose?
I like each type of shirt to have a theme that the names come from. I never want them to feel random, but instead intentional and even though each shirt is one of a kind, there is something that still connects them. It’s usually what they remind me of when I’m creating the very first shirts. I’m quite big on emotional attachments to clothing so the themes tend to be something that I think creates a feeling of joy and connection. For example, the cotton stripes printed in Blue are named after places/towns in France. When I was creating the first ever collection of the cotton shirts, the stripes and the colour blue reminded me of summers in France when I was a child, so that’s what I went with! The denim are named after artists and designers, and the dark brown printed pieces, after small luxuries or joys within a weekend, like pastries and coffee.