«It’s kind of an ideal membrane for you to be protected, to feel confident, to collect emotions in». Julie Pelipas discusses creating a relationship with garments
Julie Pelipas behind bettter.us
«It says that the universe is never-ending. It’s continuous and there’s one whole». Julie Pelipas is the brain and soul behind the bettter.us system which she crafted with a bright vision, enveloping the coexistence of fashion and an untroubled environment.
Launched in 2020, bettter transpassed the COVID-19 emergency years, only to face the hardships of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Julie’s home country. Since quitting her role as a fashion director for Vogue Ukraine, Pelipas fully dedicated herself to laying down the architecture draft of a better upcycling pattern that would stand against burnout consumption habits.
She inaugurated a design that speaks of her shell, of the first memories approaching fashion through her grandpa’s suits, of styling a silhouette as a remedy for shyness or frivol. The creator inspires by everything holding high value in her life, from yogist practices to surfing or empathizing with interior design fragments.
«I feel the most inspiration when I’m empty; when I don’t get any references in my eyes – no movies, no pictures, no Instagrams, nothing. There’s this quietness, silence, and emptiness giving me a lot of inspiration».
Bettter.us encourages up-cycle
In this free mind space, she collects ideas and strategies leading to a guidebook resembling project. The system is a meeting point between scientific research and imaginative cosmology with bettter.us collections disclosed as drops with minimal production.
The clothes emanate a strong character while relying on adjustability and personalized fitting. Working with dead-stock, resale, and adapting to old items, Julie Pelipas pairs powerful design with algorithms and tailoring documentation.
Bettter.us encourages up-cycle to take a seductively dandy turn, all while informing customers about the supply chain and production behind each garment. Sharing a meaningful visual collection, she walks us through the design process and the innovative lens she uses to call for change in the fashion industry. «It’s going to be the very first time in my life that I show something very personal in an editorial».
Fashion needs algorithms to go forward
The escape from the overproduction and overconsumption loop exists, and bettter.us crafts a fashionable exit way. Within three years of systematic work and complex strategy incorporation, Julie Pelipas reinvented the concept of a fashion brand. She even refrains from ever defining the project as one: «I always emphasize that it’s a system, which leads it to be about the collaborative approach. It is more a community that can grow into a global system».
Call it prototype or template, bettter.us proves how fashion needs an algorithm to move forward. When using direct schemes and straightforward actions, the creative process can positively impact the second most polluting industry.
Julie Pelipas, fashion director for Vogue Ukraine
The concept of a better upcycling system (what bettter.us stands for) came to Julie Pelipas’s mind while working as fashion director for Vogue Ukraine. «It took me two years to convince myself to launch it, aware that the project would be highly elaborate. It wasn’t just about creating another brand», she remembers. Flowing with purpose, the upcycling system is well rooted in its mission to change the approach to fashion markets.
It takes reinventing the production and sourcing systems and building an alternative to supply chain stereotypes to establish an inspiring model for future labels. Attuned with Julie’s vision of offering a surrogate to big fashion brands or distinctly niche designers, bettter.us stays detached from marketing and selling push-outs.
Julie Pelipas: I felt the system should change
«I was always a rebel, and it was never easy to follow the standards of classic fashion rules». After navigating editorial content and witnessing emergent brands while working as fashion director at Vogue Ukraine, Julie Pelipas felt her innovative ideas would remain outcasts to the corporative gaze on creation.
This was due to borders and restrictions imposed on the meaning behind communication. In the industry, conscious design and elevated manufacture coexist with commercially driven brands continuously taking the scene, repeating the same choreographed narrative stimulated by a consumerist economy.
«There was a moment when I felt the system should change, thinking how if not people like me introducing alternatives, we will continue to swim in the same direction within this tide, and nothing is ever going to change».
Fashion production is about its environment
Fashion production is about what happens around it as much as inside, resembling a color book. All the colors need to harmoniously settle together in order to build up the final image. Trapped in notions of overstimulated sustainability and green strategies, customers are rarely truly informed, not knowing how to change their purchasing behavior to benefit denigrated earth resources.
By implementing the better upcycling system, Julie Pelipas admits to taking risks while fighting complex obstacles to attain her mission. She wants to exhibit an effective template accessible to anyone. «I believe that clothing is the membrane closest to your body. It affects you. It is something that you live with. I believe that by developing another kind of product and a different system, engaging as many people as possible with this new philosophy will have a much deeper influence on mindset».
big companies converting patterns, taking the example from smaller businesses
Ultimately, bettter.us bridges a dialogue with other creatives and fashion businesses, calling for an active shift in the industry, saying that it «is okay to change the patterns, to think out of the classic of ways of production and supply chains».
When smaller agents manage to inspire the market by illustrating that a desirable product can be simultaneously massively requested and morally produced, it almost instantly guarantees real change. «I believe that the industry has a chance to change only with significant players like big companies converting patterns, taking the example from smaller businesses».
Being responsible with media
Our present is absent of silence. Between content and advertising, communication has impactfully changed, with few constrictions favoring the truth. With the leverage of coming from a media background and working for fashion publications like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, Julie Pelipas made a conscious choice. She opted to remove digital and influence markets for bettter.us, distinguishing the project identity as a ‘pure concept product’, the viewpoint of a firm believer that quality items hold onto loyal consumers defining their connection.
There’s sophistication in wanting to attract people empowered by a vision and convinced by tangible production operations. Serendipity has been removed by more of the same labels mingling with followers more eager about the person wearing the garment. While developing the bettter identity, Julie refused to use influencers or digital marketing, drawing attention solely from the organic interest in her project. «In the world of Kim Kardashian, I try to stay Keanu Reeves», she candidly jokes. However, the gravity of matters such as an ongoing war and a rising economic recession inclines her to reconsider the bettter strategy. She remains faithful to a genuine and honest iconography nevertheless.
«I can choose the women who transpire this cool aura, that I respect and are inspiring; they can be scientists or directors, for example. I struggle to picture a bettter suit on a girl’s Instagram page when there is nothing behind it. I truly want to see bettter suits on women with something to tell, that are doing something, contributing like social workers or volunteers». Julie wants to continue pursuing a transparent and organic dialogue between customers enriching the strings of a genuine community.
Unraveling the environmental injustice of clothing production in India
In our conversation, we were drawing a parallel between building a substantial product and a media platform. Which of the two would better embody the mission of a system? Julie instinctively leaps for the first. «I strongly believe that product itself has much more influence on people’s minds» attesting to how the garments’ quality has the force to change perceptions.
However, the DATA segment on the bettter.us website is a niche media ramification tackling research on environmental issues and features on topics otherwise uncomfortable for mainstream platforms. «To me, media is very responsible, and if I could do something in this direction, it would be scientific research with vastly meaningful messages».
Some of the documented essays read ‘Unraveling the environmental injustice of clothing production in India’ advocating for a change in the narrative that imminently affects humans in labor. Undoubtedly, it shows how bettter.us acts as a vehicle of change that relies on valuable information and trustworthy communication in the service of responsible consumption behavior.
Men’s versus Women’s suits. The body needs (design) translation
Behind every bettter.us suit, the Smart Design Algorithm converts the original piece into a women’s garment. Aesthetically, each drop perfectly aligns with the project’s four manifestos. The first one would state that «A better garment counters the objectification of the body». Each item condemns the long-lasting history of feminine beautification. It goes against erasing the visual codes attesting to interior and intellectual qualities. All of Julie P’elipas’s designs reimagine gender uniforms without flaunting the unisex card, becoming almost an elongation of the creator.
None of the bettter.us collections are imaged for men since they follow a specific feminine body architecture traced by an algorithm. The operation contradicts conventional women’s dress and eradicates the principle of unisex clothing. For Julie, the suit is more than a piece of tailoring, «it’s kind of an ideal membrane for you to be protected, to feel confident, to collect emotions in. Keep them there». Their latest drop, 5 PM SUIT, is about selecting confidence and resilience over artifice, about dressing smart with ironic hints of allure.
Without a degree in fashion design, Julie counts on her vision gained in almost twenty years of experience, when she was observing and archiving in an anthropological manner all the creative phenomenons she has encountered. The fashion industry significantly progressed towards upcycling techniques, where most brands commonly share designs that can easily intuit the reuse of dead stock. Nevertheless, bettter.us uses discarded fabrics and second-hand items, reviving them to a status of newness.
A visible lack of patchwork details or restyling games – everything Julie does is about reconstructing an image without breaking it into small pieces and putting them all together again. The main difference between art objects or collector items and timely pieces comes from practicality. «The more functional clothes are, the more desirable they become and will make you look better. There are more chances that you will keep these clothes and wear them continuously. This is the mission that we have. I want these clothes to be your close friends».
Bettter.us introduces the SDA
Partnering with 3D Look, a virtual try-on startup from Odessa, (Ukraine), bettter.us introduces the SDA (smart design algorithm). The idea derives from what Julie Pelipas identifies as a historical mistake in shaping gendered figures. She finds it funny how men could get away with the perfect body for so long, all thanks to the clever design of suits that act surgically over men’s silhouettes.
Despite being worn by intelligent women, who can perform and work, their garments throughout history have always emphasized curves and unreal proportions. Consequently, the woman’s suit doesn’t complement all body shapes, while men’s suits do it effortlessly. With bettter.us, by using up-cycled suits, Julie borrows the best of both worlds to outline a product that feels personal and protective, something of a witted shell.
Assembled through smart analytics, the SDA uses cataloged proportions of men’s suits and a database of unique female body metrics. It envisions synchronicity between the two. Most garments are adjustable, navigating all sizes and fitting. It is paradoxical how something so universal can come to feel so private.
Bettter.us Passports and garment currency
The bettter passports are a helpful system addressing transparency and customer’s access to honest creation documentation. Made out of fabric in an ‘old school’ way and attached to each garment, they substitute the label with an accessible tool tracing the history of an up-cycled product.
When Julie Pelipas launched bettter.us, transparency tracking apps or instruments to help reduce the carbon impacts didn’t exist. This dispatch of cloth called passport presents all the sourcing information alongside the place of production in an attempt to infuse stories in fabric pieces.
Already programmed in the system development, bettter will soon introduce a digital passport attached to the physical one. «We can only shift from greenwashing towards truly sustainable fashion when we have legalized apps and technologies approved by governments that are worried the real world customer can trace all the information. Right now, we have many technologies, but they’re still questionable».
Julie Pelipas and the ‘emotional membrane’
Becoming pioneers in communicating the garment’s previous lives came naturally for Julie. It reflects the consistency she puts in all product areas. Through these rectangular fabric patches, bettter.us clothing becomes individual. They all share the name of a person who inspired the look, like Fran after Fran Leibowitz or Rogers for the architects Richard and Su Rogers.
Julie visualizes the creation of small films depicting in short glimpses an intense visual story about the character that comes as muse. Each passport will carry these videos as a QR code, something to unravel alongside the item. Integrative part of the storytelling, this element reinforces a relationship between the customer and the ’emotional membrane’, between people, elevating the mood.
bettter stations: where customers can exchange any clothes as currency
But what happens with bettter.us pieces once someone is done using them? Julie Pelipas confesses to working on a bigger-scale project that will introduce bettter stations where customers can exchange any clothes as currency available inside the system. It will allow people to obtain bettter items for discarded cloth while offering a service that fixes and up-cycles the existing garments. However, working with vastly trained professionals and craftsmen with a visible focus on quality and detail affects the costs of such a project.
They become the only obstacle to its implementation. Bettter.us has always worked with dead stock and pre-owned clothing supplied by factories, brands, online resale platforms, and offline second-hand outlets. Ever since the law has withdrawn the right to discard and burn big companies’ deadstock, Julie hopes to collaborate with the brands producing high quantities.
Brands not ashamed of their dead stock
«My dream and my mission are to get access to create a deal with brands so that they are not ashamed of their dead stock, but they are proudly giving it away to be repurposed into new products».
Stuck in a vicious circle where the more fashion produces, the more it sells, bettter.us acts like a training methodology showcasing the worth of up-cycled garments. In a social context praising newness as the sole aspiration, customers need to change their mindsets and be educated.
«Giving them the feeling that up-cycle products look sexier, cooler than normal products». Highlighting a narrative she hopes will be desirable for women, Julie is concerned with customers deeply immersed in qualitative and meaningful tailoring that also wrestles harmful design. «It’s like your grandpa’s suits that remain in the bedroom for a century and it’s still intact».
Rehearsing creativity during war
Leading a fashion business during war means responsibility for human lives and safety, pursuing creation while expecting to lose everything in seconds. Since its inception in 2020, bettter.us has dealt with remote launches during COVID times, economic strikes, and most recently the endangerment of all living conditions.
Julie Pelipas is a global citizen born in Mariupol, Ukraine, and she decided to develop the project in her home country’s capital, Kyiv. Awarded as one of the fashion industry’s Leaders of Change at the Fashion Awards at the end of 2022, she dedicated her accomplishment to the Ukrainian community applauding the victory of art over war.
Julie describes the first months of conflict as survival mode, with a destroyed production facility and half stock burned from missile strikes. Collecting the ashes of ruins in a burning country, there were many moments when Julie Pelipas thought she would have to give up. She talks of magic, an alignment that helped her move forward despite the ongoing crisis.
Even after relocating the staff to Portugal, people became homesick at home and took the responsibility to return to Kyiv, where they remained safely for two months before further bombing attacks in the city center. Julie managed to relocate the bettter R&D to London, while another part of the team moved back to Portugal.
Bettter.community partnering with Given Name organization
Coming from Ukrainian culture, the fashion innovator admits to always buying second-hand, from stores where she could access versatile brands from different eras drawing inspiration to form a niche sourcing system. There’s resilience and a gentle hunger for transformation in her people, one of the reasons she felt the urgency to spoil Ukrainian creatives with all the visibility they deserve.
To sustain these artists, Julie extended bettter.us to bettter.community partnering with Given Name organization. Together, they created a platform for photographers, stylists, designers, or producers all around the fashion and art field, acting as a PR agency promoting their work. This allows them to continue evolving and receiving job opportunities while obstructed by war. Currently working on a London exhibition showcasing artists and performers alongside Ukrainian cinema, Julie Pelipas hopes these initiatives will translate the Ukrainian modern culture codes to global audiences.
bring attention the needs of Ukraine – Julie Pelipas’ engagement
She can’t stress enough how they «don’t want to continue to speak about the creatives from a victim standpoint. We want to position them to be discovered as utterly strong and relevant artists». There’s a sense of hope mixed with worry in her voice when explaining the difficulty of including talent in this industry, even though bettter community managed to secure most of the creatives with commissioned work and legal protection.
The global community slowly turned away from the Ukrainian people, but the consequences of war still pierce their lives with economic and health outbursts. «We have to bring attention and voice the needs of Ukraine in any language, in any format, on any page, no matter what’s the magazine». Julie Pelipas has styled Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, for the Vogue US editorial shoot by Annie Leibovitz. She has already collaborated with the couple of leaders in peaceful times.
Chasing an imaginary that will remain in history, the concept and storytelling vanished, living room for an honest depiction free of styling adornment and fashion artifice. «It becomes a documentary, a real portrait of her. And again, the magic happens. He appears in the room in that frame. Because of the way he hugs her, he holds her hands. It is so charming and real. And you can see this».
Jule Pelipas
Julie Pelipas is a Ukrainian stylist and fashion director. She is the fashion director of Vogue Ukraine and an ambassador of No More Plastic Foundation. Peplipas was born in Mariupol, Ukraine. She graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
