The Vergecast - Online shopping is full of copycats

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

This week on The Vergecast, guest host Mia Sato talks to YouTube fitness pioneer Cassey Ho (better known as Blogilates) about the well-oiled machine that is the dupe economy. Ho shares her experience creating her own line of athletic wear that sooner or later gets ripped off by countless copycats — and how she tries to fight back. Then, Mia brings an audio diary from a visit to Fabscrap, a textile recycling facility in Brooklyn, that is working to save fabric and other materials from the landfill. Fashion is a wasteful industry, not unlike tech — luckily, there are people like Fabscrap staff and volunteers who are working towards solutions. Finally, Victoria Song swings by to help answer a hotline question about how to make the high-tech Clueless closet a reality. If you have a question for us, call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]. Further reading How dupes turned online shopping upside down Lululemon sues Costco over viral alleged “dupes” The US finally acknowledges textile waste in new report Your stuff is actually worse now Ghana becomes dumping ground for the world’s unwanted used clothes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of knocking off other people's work and selling it for $2. I'm your host, Miyasato, and today we're talking about knockoffs and waste, two big problems in the fashion industry. Whenever a design goes viral, the copycats are close behind. Today, I'm going to talk with an OG fitness YouTuber Cassie Ho, better known as Blogalates, about how she fights the dupes of her products. Another result of the ultra-fast fashion cycle is a lot of textile waste. I visited a textile recycling plant in Brooklyn, New York, to find out how they save textiles from the landfill. And finally, if you're into fashion like me, you probably wish you had the clueless closet. We'll have V-Song to take a listener question about how to make that a reality.

All that is coming up, but first, I have to go maximize shareholder value in an ad break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.

And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients.

And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. The internet is built on repetition and copying. And now that same dynamic has permeated our real lives as well. A photo will go viral and thousands of lookalike products will follow, often sold from faceless, nameless companies. Cassie Ho built a fitness empire on YouTube. She now has her own line of athletic wear that's prime material for dupes. Cassie, you've been online a long time. So tell us who you are. and what you do. All right. My name is Cassie Ho, but I may be better known as bloggalates.

I started my YouTube channel in 2009 teaching free fitness workouts. And it's been a long time. I can't believe it's 2025 now, but I am still online, but my content has changed a little bit. You know, it transformed from free fitness, horizontal, long form videos to now vertical, short form where I'm teaching people about the why behind my designs. I run a very rapidly growing active wear and apparel company called Popflex. And we just started our second brand, launched our second brand blog Alates at Target earlier this year. So my life is all about innovation, design, and it's just been really, really fun to build this company. And I just want to like clarify for anyone who doesn't know that Cassie is like an OG blueprint fitness blogger. Like I remember watching Cassie's

videos when I was a teenager, so it was kind of surreal to talk with you about something that is kind of, you know, related but different. So you've been building Pop Flex Active. You have this blog Alates deal with Target. And obviously, you share a lot of like behind the scene stuff and development with your fans online on social. Do you remember the first time that you saw something, whether that was online or in store, and you were like, wait a minute, I designed this. Yeah. I mean, I designed this very specific scort called the pirouette scort in 2021. And I remember as I was designing it, I told my husband, who's also my business partner, I said, Sheehan's going to take this one. I just knew it. I had a feeling.

We released the design. It goes viral. And three months later, guess who takes it? It's Sheehan. So that was a whole situation. I made a big post about it. The U.S. Sheehan president reached out to me and wanted to speak because his daughter was a fan of Blagalottis and came into his room yelling and being like, oh my God, what did you do, Cassie? And I'm very grateful for her because we ended up talking. And even though he and Sheehan promised that this wasn't going to happen again, surely enough in another three months, another dupe of the pirouettes court shows up. And since then, there's been multiples, over a dozen different designs from Popflex stolen by Sheehan, but also since then,

I've been granted the USPTO design patent for that specific score, which has helped protect it in some ways, but at the same time, it's been extremely frustrating because the lack of enforcement from the government to help innovators, inventors, designers, protect their creative work makes it almost impossible sometimes to go up against these Goliaths when I'm this small David. But, you know, I keep speaking up because it is unfair to be taking advantage of. And at least I have a platform from which to speak, whereas a lot of independent designers may not. So when I do this, I speak for all of us. Yeah.

And I want like to just sort of describe the skirt a little bit. I have a skirt in the other room that I bought for the story that I was working on. but it's like a unique type of active wear. It's like kind of lilac. Well, the one I have is lilac, but it comes in a bunch of colors. It has several tiers of mesh skirting, shorts underneath. But what else makes a design special where you were like, I know that this is so special that someone will knock it off?

Yeah. So the thing with Popflex, with me and all of my designs is I had this element of just like romance to every design because that's who I am. And so I love when there's this intersection of fashion and functionality and innovation altogether in one. So you get this beautiful, twirlable mesh scort with tears. And then you also get the functionality of a drawstring to cinch in your waist a little bit. Of course, no front seam for no camel toe pockets on the side so that you don't have to carry a purse if you don't want to, which I don't really. And so this scort was so unique. I had never seen anything like it on the market before, which is also. so why the USPTO granted me the patent for it, which is extremely hard to get, but like,

so exciting that I was able to get it. And then wildly enough, a couple years after the Sheean incident, Taylor Swift ends up wearing it in 2024. And then the score goes crazy viral, so viral that, you know, our sales go up insanely. But at the same time, the dupes get out of control because now everyone has seen it. And since then, it's been so wild. There's been over 2,065 different infringements on my designs since the Sheehan one. It's insane and it is game of whack-a-mole. And is that just a drop in the bucket? Do you feel like you're getting a lot of these dupes that are floating around? I mean, I think we're getting some of them. I don't think I'm getting all of them. It's nearly impossible. You know, I have,

almost two full-time people constantly typing in these forms to take down these infringing listings. And it's so frustrating because it takes so much time to take down a listing. That's if the platform even like decides to believe in you that day. I feel like sometimes the rules are just changing all the time depending on who's reading these forms. That's with the platform. They have a place for you at least to type in the form, right? But then when it comes to these larger, multi-billion-dollar companies, which is something that just recently happened within the past few months. And I'm talking about the Nordstroms, the Coles, the J.C. pennies, the Macs, the Victoria's secrets, the T.J. Maxes and Marshalls. Now they all have dupes of either this court or other patented products,

and with them it becomes a game of money, right? Who can pay their lawyers more to shut the other person down, to overwhelm the entire out the other person? And so, when I talk about being a David versus a Goliath, this is exactly what it is, except I'm one David against several Goliaths now, and it's just so frustrating that these are American corporations. We're all supposed to be abiding by the same law, but there's no governmental enforcement to help me enforce the law. So it's just been so frustrating. And that's why I keep speaking up about it, because there is also the Court of Public Opinion and social media. But when it comes to money, they obviously have the billions that I do not.

Yeah, I wanted to ask, like, where are these dupes popping up? Are there certain sites that, like, every single day, you know there's going to be another look-alike product as yours? Or are there some sites where, like, it's shown up once, and then you kind of knocked it out and then they didn't try it again. But, like, where are you seeing the dupes? Yeah, the biggest culprits are TikTok shop, Amazon, Timo, AliExpress, Alibaba, and Sheen, of course, but I feel like everything is coming from probably these third-party

sellers buying from Ali Express or Alibaba because some of these, they look exactly the same, but they're under different vendor names. So trying to attack the Ali sources is the best, but it is a constant game of Wackamol. It's insane. I also see DuP Influencer as a whole category, especially with the affiliate links that they have like it's multiplying like a virus. It's really bad right now. We will actually gift influencers the real Popplex obviously, but there was an incident where we noticed that this particular influencer was then promoting the dupe and linking to it with an affiliate link. And so,

you know, the internal team was like talking about it. Like, how do we deal with this? This is so weird. And so we crafted a response that was very much like, hey, I don't know if you've like seen Cassie's stories and stuff. It was very much like an educational response and like we we hope that you can continue to wear the real one. And so that particular influencer was very sorry. She didn't realize what was going on. And so she was fine. We've had other influencers where they'll promote a dupe, we'll reach out and offer to send them a free one of the real one. And some have been gracious and accepted. And some will just straight up ignore us because they know that they can sell the dupe, but maybe they can't sell the original version. So it's a tough place out there. But all I can say

is that I can lead with love and education, but what people decide to do is what they decide to do, and I don't have control over that. That's absolutely wild. Like, I have to say that is really, really wild. It feels like, you know, because the dupes are constantly popping up on platform after platform, like there's always that affiliate money theoretically, right, like dangling in front of them. Even if one Amazon listing gets removed, you can just link to a new one. So it really feels like, I think you use the term,

Wackamol. Wackamol. It is absolutely whackamol. And like, we also have affiliate links to pop flags, but I understand that there is that dupe customer. How many dopes does your team go after in like a month, let's say? Just this year, it's been an average of 600 a month. Wow. So it's gone insane in 2025. And when these are showing up on these platforms, are they using your photos? Are they taking their own product photos? Like, what do the listings actually look like? It's a mixture of everything. So in the beginning, it was a lot of just taking photos from our website. And then because we were able to take down listings based on copyright infringement, they then used AI to change the model's faces, even though it was still obviously the same photo. So that made it really hard for straight up

copyright infringement. So we had to prove in different ways that, no, this is actually our photo, but manipulated. Then it turned into them. stealing my content and posting it, for example, as a TikTok commercial, which would then link over to a drop shipping website, which also had the photos stolen from our website. So what ends up happening is that a fan or a potential customer will think it's me because clearly it's my content, linking to a place with our photos, they buy it, they get something that's really bad quality because it's obviously. And then they end up coming back to my page and blaming me for bad quality, slow shipping, and all this stuff that is not my product. So when it comes to doping,

oftentimes people are like, oh, well, but you should be grateful for the free marketing or whatever. And it's like, no, actually, they have duped the customer so hard that not only do they blame me for bad product, in some cases, fans have DM'd me and said like, oh, is Hilara your subbrand? Because they've copied the marketing, not just of me, right, but the marketing of them hiring a model with my body type shooting in a bedroom that looks like mine to the point where people think it is my company because they're like I have such a way of doing my marketing. So the duping has gone so insane and so deep that it's not beneficial at all for anyone who's trying to say that. It's absolutely harmful and tarnishing the brand. The other thing is once you start seeing all

these dupes everywhere that aren't mine, it kind of saturates the market. People, become tired or sick of seeing this thing, but the thing is it wasn't the original thing. It's everywhere because it's also the fake thing. So it also devalues the novelty and the specialness of the original design. And that's extremely frustrating. Yeah. There are so many weird levels of like lookalikes happening in that example you gave. There's like obviously the lookalike product. There's the lookalike model. There's the lookalike house. There's a lookalike photo shoot. It's like breaking my brain just thinking about like how deep this goes. It goes really deep. And people don't know. And even when I try to explain to them, they can't really understand. And you don't really understand until you've gone through it yourself. But yeah, it goes too deep. And the consumer, I mean, I don't even blame them for not knowing. If someone's duping you this hard, how are you supposed to even get out of that?

Yeah. I know if you've posted about one really wild example where, like, your face was sort of like face swapped in some way and it was your video, but the face was different. Can you talk about that a little bit? this one just brought chills throughout my body. When I found this video, I was like, wait, that's literally my house, my body, but now the face is the face of a Caucasian woman. And I was like, what? And for everyone listening who's not watching this, I am Vietnamese and Chinese. So that was very unsettling to see. And again, because if the platform is using an AI tool, right, to check if this is copyright infringement, they're going to be like, no, the face is different, but it's obviously it's taken from a source, which is mine. And in so many ways, just duping in general has been so dangerous for, you know, small business owners, creatives, but women as well. And I've seen a lot

of influencers have their faces taken, mouths manipulated to sell something that they never even spoke about. And it gets even dirtier and deeper than that when it comes to certain websites that that certain people are visiting for certain times of videos. I think you know what I'm talking about. And it's a lot of AI, I don't know, violence, I suppose, against women, too. And that's just a whole other topic. I'm curious if you've ever purchased a dupe of one of your products and what was that dupe like. Yeah. So I have purchased the Sheehan dupe because I just wanted to see what it looked like. It was horrendous quality. The mesh was kind of rough. I believe that one had a front seem still, I don't even know if it had pockets. I'm not sure, but I just needed to have one in my hand, so I knew. But more recently, I got a dupe from T.J. Max and Marshalls because a fan had gone

shopping and alerted me that there were racks full of pirouette scort dupes. And when I compared it side by side, I knew for sure that they had my score, my original score in hand, because there were details on that score that you can't see from the online photos. You can only see it if you have it in hand. For example, we have this specific bar tack in the back of our waistband to ensure that the drawstring doesn't fall out in the wash. You can't see that on the photo. That was there. Even the shape of the end cap at the end of the drawstring was exactly the same.

I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about, like, you know, a lot of the discourse around dopes ends up actually kind of maybe spiraling in other directions into sometimes a discussion of clubs. or what people can afford. And, you know, there are a lot of shoppers who say, well, we deserve a cheaper alternative because it's not our fault. We can't afford the original or we don't want to pay for the original. What do you make of that kind of like discussion? Look, I understand because I grew up shopping at the Rosses and buying everything on clearance. We never bought anything full price. Okay. However, in this day and age, you know, you also have so many different ways to get clothing. There's thrifting, of course, there's clearance facts. There's also sample sales. Like we just had our sample sale where you can get the original score, it's the original

poplux anything, at a literal fraction of the price. And we had people lighting up around the block to go purchase this. And so there are different ways to do this without supporting thievery, because that's what it is. And like I understand like not being a able to afford something. And that's why I came out with the Blagelotti's line at Target, which is a more affordable price point for something still designed by me, still designed by Cassie Ho. And so I feel like with those like alternatives, why do we have to go and buy the dupe? Why do we need to do that? Because you're only hurting someone. And I just feel like that's a, like I can understand where that argument comes from, but there's also alternatives. And I've tried to offer solutions so

that you don't have to. And I'm curious, like, how you feel as someone whose creative work went into this product. Like, when you see a dupe, I guess you feel like your creative work is being devalued? When I see a dupe, I feel like it's my stolen property. I feel like someone went into my house and stole something from my closet. Like, that is literally what it feels like, except multiply that and see it also morphed into something uglier. Like, that's really, really weird. And because I spend anywhere between one and a half to three years on one design, these are my babies. It's not just like a thing that I'm throwing

out there. There's love and passion and soul in every single one of these. And look, like, if somebody can't spend the time to design their own creation, then maybe do we talk about a royalty situation? Like, it's like, I'm not trying to keep this away from. anyone. But it's just like, but don't steal it from me either. This has to be done in a business partnership type way. You can't just steal. That's not fair. Fashion obviously is a pretty wasteful industry and humans are buying more clothes than maybe ever before in the history of humanity. How do you as like a designer and a business owner make sure that what you sell will last a really long time, that people will love it. How do you convince shoppers that, you know,

spending a little bit more to buy the original is worth it for them? Yeah. So look, the quality of an item is going to be, how long does this last, right? That's the sustainability of an item. Now, I will say at the beginning of this conversation right here about sustainability, that the best way to be sustainable is to not buy anything, okay? To be like our dads who are still wearing shirts from the 80s. Like, that's the most sustainable. Now, I am. I am. And, I'm in the apparel industry and I am creating product, but I am choosing the best fabrics that don't break down. The fibers don't break down in the wash after like the first one. Like it's going to last you like several years or more. And what we do is we do wear testing on all different sizes. We're

checking everything and goes through a third party testing to ensure that this product is really good. And here's the thing. I'm not charging Lula Lemon or Allo prices. I'm also not charging Sheean prices. I'm somewhere right in the middle, but I'm giving you that same quality. And I'm just going to say it, like, as a Lulu. So I think it's a great deal if you're willing, I guess for certain price point people, if you're willing to save up a little bit and buy this like one good leggings instead of like seven bad leggings, it's going to feel so good and a lot more sustainable when you can do that. Yeah. You mentioned that, you know, sometimes you spend years designing and developing products. I wonder if you can talk about like how that compares to the speed with which dupes kind of just are churned out.

Like those happen what? Like overnight? Oh my God. It's insane. Okay. So like I said, I spend between one and a half to three years designing and developing one style. Okay. The Shee and dupe came out three months later.

That's when I found it. I don't even know when it actually came up. But I would not be surprised. and I've like read it in different places that sometimes dupes can come out in as little as like three to seven days, like based on whoever this manufacturer is because they might just have stock mesh on hand. They may have stock whatever on hand. And they just, I don't even know how the supply chain works for fast fashion. I can't even comprehend it because for me, it's like every time we develop something, we're actually like weaving the actual fabric. We're dyeing the

fabric. Then we cut in so and there's like so much stuff that goes into it. I do not know how these fast fashion companies do it. They have to have on-hand stock or something so that they can just, like, go. And it's funny because sometimes I'll, like, watch these TikToks from girls who are buying from these fast fashion websites and they're getting things that don't look like the picture, which no doubt, if you're buying a dress for $5, it's not going to look like this dress that, you know, I saw somewhere else for $250. And you can sew tell that whoever, I don't even want to call it a pattern maker,

but let's just say the sower was forced to copy this thing from a photo. You can so tell that they had no idea what they were doing because there was no time for like pattern making and developing. It's just sew it, get it out. I honestly, I mean, I think you'd have to talk to someone in fast fashion. You truly know because I don't even know how that works. Cassie, you and your team encounter dupe listings constantly. So have you found any like tips for how consumers can spot whether something is a dupe? Yes. These are the things that I look out for as a consumer myself when I'm shopping online. Okay. So what? What? If you see a listing where the angle stays the same the whole time and as you're clicking different colors, only the color is photoshopped and changing, super red flag. If you see a listing where all the models' heads are cut off, super red flag. If you see that all the photos in the listing kind of look like they're from different photo shoots, that is also a red flag. There's just so much you can tell from the listing, specifically the photo shoots. that definitely gives me like this is a dupe vibes and of course the price. Like if the price just seems too low to be true, likely it is.

Yeah, sometimes I also will take an image that I see from like Amazon and just throw it in Google reverse image search to see what site it's actually from. And that's actually a really good way to figure out like, oh, this is definitely a copy of something. Oh, 100%. I will also do that, especially like specifically if I just kick just kick. can't find it. And I know like this is definitely from somewhere else. Oh, something else to check too is go to like the returns like FAQ's page. And if it's starting to get a little dicey, like you can't find an address or it's from overseas or they don't allow returns or exchanges, like super duper red flag. Because you want to be able to try something on and return it if it doesn't fit. Yeah, I actually wanted to ask if you like do a lot of online shopping. Like I am also kind of

paranoid about buying stuff, especially from like new brands that I've never tried. So do you shop online a lot? Yes, I shop online a lot. And because women's sizing is all over the place and sometimes brands don't even pay attention to their own size chart, what I do sometimes is I have to buy two of everything because I'm never sure. I'm happy to pay the return fee. I'll pay it. Yeah. Have you ever gotten got by any listings where you were like, oh, I think I like this, I think I want this, and then it came and you were like, I was definitely catfished. Oh, got and got. Um, yeah, TikTok shop. Um, some of my friends have been like, oh my God, I love TikTok shop and coupons and stuff. I'm like,

oh, I don't know. I feel weird about this. But I kept getting an ad or like influencers or creators talking about this like one jumpsuit with a scrunch butt that just make the butt look so good. And I was like, oh, okay, fine. It was like really late at night. And I like decided to just buy it, whatever. And, you know, it came back. And when they sent me, I bought two things. One, they sent the wrong thing, which was bad. And then secondly, the other thing, the scrunch butt wasn't doing anything. And so, you know, I just, I don't trust TikTok shop for clothing. I'm very scared. And so I'll stick to like my main brands that I buy from that I know my size in. It's just too scary out there. Yeah, I'm so curious if the jumpsuit with a scrunched butt was in fact maybe a dupe of something else, like a poorly executed dupe.

You know what? I'm not sure because that scrunch butt jumpsuit. I see it all over Amazon. I see it on TikTok shop. I also see it with the head cut off in certain places. And then I see it on like AI models. But I actually don't know where did that come from. Yeah. There should be a website. I feel like someone needs to make a website called like dupesexposed.com or something. And then you could like put a picture of the thing that you're looking at and they can show you where the original came from. Like that would be a really, really good idea for somebody out there. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really hard to just, like, get to the bottom of things, right? And, like, track down where it started. Because these things pop up in so many different corners of the internet. And it's, I'm sure, like, you can attest to this. It's impossible to track them all down. It's impossible to get to every customer and be like, no, no, no, this is actually a lookalike of this other thing, right? Like, there's just like, there's endless shelf space on the internet and someone's got to fill it. No, that's very true. And that's why I am so vocal about telling me. my story and calling out these thieves that are doing this because what ends up happening is that if you are able to educate a larger audience, then they'll also want to help fight for you. And it's been really cool to see us all rally together because by telling my story, I've connected with other independent designers who are going through the same thing. So new friendships have been brought forth there.

And then, you know, I'll meet fans on the street and they'll just be like, keep fighting, like never give up. And so it's been really, really cool because nobody. wants a big corporate Goliath to take advantage of them. And so I feel like we're all just helping each other. And also seeing the comments online too underneath someone's selling a dupe. Some of my fans will call it out. And like, I love that. And I'm just so grateful for it because me as a singular human, there's no way I could do this alone. You have been online through many different iterations of the internet. You've seen platforms come and go.

You've seen formats come and go. You've seen businesses come and go. You've seen businesses come and go. I've seen creators come and go, I'm sure. And I keep having this experience recently, and it's really why I wanted to write about dupes, where I just feel like I'm seeing the same thing online over and over and over again. Like, it does not stop. I scroll my feed. I get like four of the same videos. I go on Amazon or I go on other shopping platforms and like item after item, it's just the same thing. Do you feel, well, one, I guess, does that feel familiar to you? Is this your experience right now? of parts of the internet? Yeah, I mean, TikTok, when it first started for a lot of us in the pandemic, was such a pure and innocent, fun, quirky place, right? Like, as any website or social media platform, when it begins, it's very much like that, right? And now it's turned into what feels like a vertical video QBC. Like, everyone is selling at you. It's a lot of affiliates. And when affiliates can make their little chunk of change from their link and it becomes a very viable business for them, then that ends up becoming the feed because it also helps TikTok end up

making money. And at the end of the day, like we talked about with the big corporations, like continuing to sell my product, even though they're infringing my patent, like, it's about the money. So my experience is the same as yours. And it is frustrating to have product being pushed in my face all the time when sometimes I'm just trying to, I don't know, see a recipe, a look at the different fish in the ocean, or just like a new trend. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of the same thing. But yeah, it's a lot of creators also kind of mimicking other creators because they've seen what works. Yeah, it's starting to get really tiring online. Yeah. And, you know, obviously you've had your designs, your physical goods copied. Have you? Have you?

you had content copied in the past? Oh yeah. When I first came out with my format for a design video, which really tells you the why behind a design, I'll put like, you know, I'll tug on the front seam or the lack of a front seam and show that there's no camel tool. I'll put a very specifically, I put a water bottle in my pocket. I remember just a few months after me doing that, I started to see that type of video almost frame by frame with the same phrasing that I would use. anti-camel to it, like who says that, used in videos across the internet. And it made me really upset, but of course, like, I don't own a video format, whatever, right? Everyone says like, oh, imitation is the best form of flattery, okay, fine, whatever. And it happened until it actually

stopped happening because what ended up happening, that was a lot of happenings in one sentence, is that I continue to innovate. So I can continue to do that type of video, not just for a legging or a biker short, but I have rompers, cargo pants. I have dresses, you know, things that these other brands, they can only copy me on the legging because they've only innovated so far. And so for me, that actually stopped happening, which is really great. I'm very happy. And I remember during that time, I was so upset and so sad about just being copied everywhere, just like design-wise, content-wise, marketing-wise, like everything, right? But my friend told me, Cassie, you have to keep innovating, keep thinking about the future because even though they're

going to copy you, like, don't think they're going to stop. They're going to keep copying you, but at least you'll always be a few steps ahead. So never stop focusing on the innovation. And because I've done that, I guess the copycat video is like kind of like, at least to me now, is a smaller part of my frustrations than it was before. And do you spend that time instead just like designing new products or interacting with fans, like what is your, what is like, I guess, the antidote as someone who sees their work all over done by someone else? Yeah, I mean, I have to pour my energy into creation, into innovation, into design. But in this very moment, even though I don't want to be, I am also pouring a lot of

my energy into fighting the Goliaths and getting the story out there. I hope one day that I won't have to do that, but maybe this is a part of my journey as a designer and an innovator. But I think the best use of my time, and I know this, is to keep designing. But there's just that fire inside of me. And I just like can't, I won't, I won't be silenced if someone is doing the wrong thing, not just to me, but to a lot of other independent designers without a voice. And so right now, my energy is split between that and innovation. That's Cassie Ho from Bloggalades and Popflex. After the break, I have an audio diary from my trip to a Brooklyn fabric recycling facility.

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we all take part in the fashion industry. Everyone has to wear clothes, after all. But fashion is a dirty industry. Most textile waste ends up in a landfill. We talk a lot about planned obsolescence in tech. You know, when our gadgets and appliances suddenly stop working, we have few options to repair and continue to use them. Fashion, it turns out, is similar.

A lot of new clothing doesn't last, and clothing companies often end up trashing leftover materials that end up in landfills just like our old tech. I love fashion and clothes, but I wanted to know what's being done about the tremendous amount of waste in the industry and what technological challenges still exist for the people doing this work. Luckily, a small fashion nonprofit has saved millions of pounds of textiles from landfills, and it's suing it in Brooklyn, New York. I went over there with my producer Owen Grove. We made an audio diary for The Vergecast, and you can also check out video from our visit on social.

When I visit the fab scrap warehouse in an industrial part of Brooklyn, the first thing I notice is an enormous pile of black trash bags, stacked up to the ceiling and taking up an entire area of the warehouse's main room. The fab scrap staff call this Mount Everest. All of these bags are filled with pre-consumer textiles, stuff like leftover fabric that never.

ever got made into clothing or scraps of sample fabric that brands were testing out. So all of these bags, again, are from our brand partners. That's Camille Tagle, co-founder and interim executive director at Fab Scrap, who's showing me around today. Fabscrap works with brands of all sizes. Everyone from household names like J. Crewe and Macy's, as well as more niche brands, like streetwear company Noah. They get renumbered so that we're able to collect.

data and assign it to that number and then it's an easy way for us to provide data back to our brand partners. So that's the biggest thing about what we do is encouraging and educating brands to actually track their impact and to easily analyze the numbers and so the types of data points we give them are total pounds that they've saved from landfill by recycling with fab scrap. What percentage of their total pounds were reused? What percentage was a or cycles, down cycles, and then, you know, some simple conversion metrics like the equation of CO2, you know, saved, the equivalent to trees planted. Hundreds of fashion brands big and small send leftover textiles to fab scrap.

Tagle says the nonprofit receives six to seven thousand pounds of material every week. We actually just hit two million pounds of fabric saved, which is, It's such a crazy amount. I think a really good visual is if you were to fill every single seat at Madison Square Garden with 100 pounds of fabric, that would be 2 million pounds. Oh my God. That's crazy. Fab Scrap's work is limited to materials that are coming directly from their brand partners. The millions of pounds they've saved from landfills represents just a tiny portion of overall textile waste.

They don't take used clothing donations from individuals, for example. and Fab Scraps' operation is focused on New York-based designers and brands. Just think of all the other textile waste happening across the world. Still, 7,000 pounds of material a week is a huge undertaking. And how does Fab Scrap do it? An army of volunteers. On the day we visit, the place is buzzing with people who've come to help Fab Scrap sort through thousands of pounds of textiles.

At workstations, organized in rows, volunteers' dig through black trash bags to divide fabric into different categories. Pieces of fabric, larger than the workstation table, will be resold to the public at Fab Scraps Thrift Store. The more complicated process comes with smaller scraps of fabric. Most typically, if something is not sequin, leather, plastic, has no, like, really hard components to it. If it's really just fabric, even if it's a mixed, like, mixed composition, even if it's 100% of a certain fiber, we can downcycle or shred this. All of these smaller pieces of fabric get mixed together and shredded into tiny pieces and made into

something called shoddy. Shottie takes on a bluish color with stray pieces of different fabric mixed in, a streak of yellow or smudges of black and brown. Think of it like a fabric trail mix that can be molded for different uses. Shottie often becomes different types of of insulation. So you could have them be pretty like dense and heavy like this. A lot of times they're used for the automotive industry. So like car doors require so much insulation, like really, really dense, hard, compact insulation. Or you could have it be really thin and lightweight. Like a lot of times they're now being used for packaging. You could have it for flooring, for walls and homes.

Another bin for sorting is reserved for denim. Denham fabric also gets shredded into pulp, but it gets its own process because it's great for fiber to fiber recycling, using textile waste to create new fabric. Tagle says that there's been a lot of technological advancement for 100% cotton and 100% polyester recycling. Most of our clothing is made from these two compositions. So recycling 100% cotton and 100% polyester.

Leicester fabric is a way to get the biggest impact in the industry. Denim is the least varied fabric when it comes to composition, and it's an easily recognizable fabric for volunteers. From one of the black trash bags, Camille pulls out a piece of cardboard with little pieces of fabrics stapled onto it. Each piece is just a few inches big. These are called headers. He headers are swatches or essentially sales tools that Mills will use to market their

fabric out to designers and it's how designers are shopping for their fabric. So a lot of times there is a lot of information that's really helpful for placing an order. So it'll say the fiber content. It might give a range of colors that that fabric's available. It'll say like maybe the minimums required to purchase that order. So it's really a tool for purchasing, for sourcing. But after they've placed the order for that fabric, these swatches become a little useless to design. In order to downcycle or recycle the fabric on headers, you have to separate out all the stuff that's not fabric. The cardboard, the staples, the tape. The problem is that every header looks a little different.

Some fabric has stickers on it, some doesn't, and headers are all different sizes. So that does make the sorting a bit tedious, and one of the reasons why this can't be easily mechanized is because all the formats of headers are completely different. It's one of the reasons that all of this human labor is involved in the sorting process. There's no standardization of headers. It's just a tiny piece of the fashion industry, but shows how wasteful or inefficient it can be. All of those small cuts of fabric that were sorted by volunteers eventually get compressed into a giant cube, using Fab Scratch's Baylor machine. The bailer kind of resembles an elevator. There's an open area inside that is loaded up with fabric.

by a fab scrap staffer. Close the front of the bailer, hit the button, and the machine compresses the fabric down. The bailer creates giant blocks of mixed fabric, weighing between 350 and 380 pounds. And they kind of look like a closet threw up all over. I'm just, like, fascinated to see what's in each of these.

Like, it's, like, kind of fun. Like, this looks like maybe, like, a sweater. You can examine the bales and find hints of what kind of fabrics were being done. recycled. In one cube, I found part of a knit sweater with a slashed Ralph Lauren tag. Elsewhere, there were chunks of a puffer coat and soft fleece-like fabrics. These 350-pound bales will get sent to South Carolina, where they'll be shredded by a fab scrap partner. That's how you get shoddy, that fluffy fabric trail mix that's used to make insulation.

One of the most exciting things about fab scrap, at least for me, is a thrift store. This is where the pieces of fabric too big to shred end up. Tucked in a corner of the warehouse is a room filled with reams of fabric, big cones of yarn of every color, buckets full of zippers and so much more, and all of it is for sale to the public. The amount of things are so random. These are bag straps. Okay, this is interesting. Ann Klein clearly came from that brand.

There's a bunch of them in here actually. These look like maybe elastic or like undergarments. More elastic, metal, like, um, I don't know what these are actually. Some buttons in here. Oh, these are like zipper pulls, belts maybe or buckles. Some of the thrift store offerings verge on the absurd. There's a bucket filled with mutant swimsuit pieces,

some of which are only half-constructed. Another bin has jeans in various states of completion. They might be missing chunks that were cut out by designers, perhaps in the development process. In another area, we find fringed leather jacket sleeves detached from the rest of the garment. It's a crafty person's paradise. If you sew at all or if you've been to a fabric store,

This is exactly what a normal store looks like. This is how they sell fabric. And it is kind of wild to imagine that all of this otherwise would just be thrown out. Because there's, I mean, look how beautiful this is. The team at Fab Scrap is fewer than 15 people. Standing in the thrift store and talking to Camille, I'm moved by how much Fab Scrap has been able to do. Without Fab Scrap, where would all of this stuff be?

Oh, my gosh. I mean, that's kind of the hard thing to understand when you walk into this room specifically is that when you look around the room and see how many things are so easy to work with, realizing that before fab scrap existed, all of it went to landfill. I think that's where that realization of, oh, my gosh, like, this, like, Fabscrap was able to help divert this material. Fab scrap doesn't exist in a vacuum. The textiles that come to Fab scrap are upstream from the things we buy in stores. During the height of the pandemic, for example, Camille says they saw less evening wear textiles and lots of effleisure and knits.

Fast fashion has no doubt contributed to waste in the industry, but Camille points out that those problems exist at smaller brands and other companies that people might not consider quote-unquote fast fashion. It's not just companies like Sheehan or Zara that might throw away bags and bags of materials. Through its recycling program, brand education efforts, and community thrift store, Fabscrap to me, embodies what change in the fashion industry might look like. Camille and the Fabscrap team challenge us all to reset our relationship with the clothing we buy and wear. And I think that's what's kind of amazing is that it's all built around this passion for textiles and understanding that fabric is such a valuable resource. And it's only because of fast fashion and all of these really absurd, like, societal things that, like, our perspective has changed on fabric. And it's become less recognizable as something to protect. And instead, there's been this twisted perspective of it being really easy to discard.

From consumers to big fashion companies, everyone has a role to play. When I buy something, I want it to be made out of materials that are kinder to the... environment. I want the craftspeople making my clothing to be paid fairly and treated with dignity. I want my clothes to last, and I want the ability to repair them. And I believe the fashion companies have a responsibility to strive for excellence in all these areas, even if it means producing less. Fab scrap is small, but unbelievably scrappy. No pun intended, and I really and truly did not mean to make that joke. Camille hopes the organization will continue to grow and expand. The next 10 years hopefully looks like a bit more robust in terms of like having more team

members, being able to reach other cities maybe, calling more people to the cause and having them either, you know, do that work through fab scrap or as a volunteer or as a shopper. I think just really building this community and really establishing ourselves more in other cities would be amazing. We're going to one more break and when I come back, I'll be here with V-Song. to talk about the clueless closet. It's the Vergecast. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations

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That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to short-listing candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent.

And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn. to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting

screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise. That you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay.

I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. Hello, we are back, and let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866, Verge 1-1, and the email is Vergecast at theverge.com.

We love hearing your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. And today I have Victoria'song to help me answer a very fun question from James. James says, In the last episode, the Clueless Closet was mentioned, and Mia talked about their spreadsheet, system. That's me. I've been looking for a solution to the same issue since I can never make up my mind. I'd love a deeper dive in the system used or an app, maybe the AI ones if they're good.

Sincerely, James. James, thank you for this question. To catch people up if they didn't hear the last one, we were talking about all the fake movie and TV tech that we would love to steal. And I mentioned the Clueless Closet, which is sort of like a computer system that inventories all of, of the character's clothing pieces, and then she will, like, match it, and the computer will say if it's a good match, if it's a good outfit or not. And I mentioned that I have something that's, like, kind of halfway there where I basically have this giant Excel spreadsheet that I have logged every single article of clothing that I own. I love how meticulous that is. So if you knew my closet and my living situation, you would understand why it's essential. For context, I think there are probably about, like,

300 lines rows on the spreadsheet, each containing an item. Oh my God. And I will say like it doesn't include shoes, bags, belts, hats, a lot of outer wear. But in my spreadsheet, I have like what the item is, descriptions, what season it's good for, whether it's short sleeve, long sleeve, sleeve, sleeveless, tube top, whatever. If it's a dress, if it's like long, short somewhere in the middle. Oh my God. colors, like predominant colors, whether it's vintage, whether it was a hand-me-down from my mom or a family member. And I also mark where in my apartment I've stored it because I have like, that's crucial. That's crucial marking where it is. Yeah. I have boxes under my bed in my closet, in my bureau in the like front hallway closet.

So like I need to know where things are if I need to pull something that's like out of season or whatever. Yeah. This is dedication. It's no clueless closet, but it gets the job done. and I'd be happy to include like screenshots or image of like what the spreadsheet looks like. But yeah, it's partially just like practical. You know, like I live in New York. I live in a small apartment.

And if you know anything about New York apartments, you know that they never come with enough closet space. I know you know that they never come with enough, you know, I moved to Jersey for a house. That place still doesn't have enough closet space for all the, and I like I finally have a dream walk-in closet that I have to share. But it's still not enough space, and I still don't know where all the clothes are. I still have to have a different dresser. So I get the impulse behind this, but oh my God, it seems like a lot of manual work as well. It is. It's so manual. And so, like, what I do basically is twice a year I rotate my wardrobe. So I put away winter things and take out summer things. So right now all my winter stuff is in the spreadsheet logged where I've stored it. But it's, like, inaccessible to me unless I go. digging for it. And I was just sick of having to try to find where I put things. And so that's like a big reason for the spreadsheet. But, you know, it doesn't do a lot of the things that the clueless closet does, like combine outfits or give me feedback, which honestly, like, I don't want feedback. But there are a lot of apps and things that people have built that kind of mimic the

clueless closet. So there's one version of this that is very DIY kind of crafty that is like basically a flipbook where someone has printed every article of clothing they have and put it in a little three ring binder. So this seems like a lot of work. I don't know how you feel. It's a lot of work. I love journaling.

I have all the tools necessary to make that and I feel like I need to lie down because that is a lot of dedication, a lot of work. And I kind of do a capsule closet because I, if you don't know what a capsule closet is, you kind of have a bunch of basics

that you've figured out of a mix and match. So you maximize the stuff and reduce closet space. I said try because you can try. And I don't know anyone who's successfully done. A for effort. I don't know anyone who's successfully done a capsule closet. Yeah. But yeah, I think I sent also another TikTok to you over the weekend.

I went, oh my God, is this? Yeah, let's look at it. Howard Digital Wardrobe. You upload photos of your clothes, the background gets removed. Be real. When was the last time you wore the T-shirt that's crumpled up in the bottom of your dresser right now? I know for me, the shirts that are down here have not been worn in a very long time. And some of those are shirts I used to wear every single day.

I just forgot that I own them. I was tired of this, so I created the solution for it. And this is the solution. It's an app I made called Fitted, and it's an AI-powered digital wardrobe. You upload photos are your clothes, the background gets removed, and then they get tagged using AI. Immediately, right here in the Paces tab, I can see every item of clothing that I own, whether I wear it or not. And I can go to the Fits tab, and I can start creating outfits with all of those clothes. So this is integrating everything in my entire closet and making outfits with them.

Especially these pants, the only pants that fit me. This right here is the key to wearing the clothes that you. you don't normally wear or wearing the clothes you forgot you own. Of course, you find an outfit you like. You can save it. It shows up in your safe fits with all the rest of them. Absolutely game changer. It does take some time to actually upload your clothes to the app, but I promise you once you have them up there, it is the best feeling in the world. Go download fitted now. Okay. Interesting. I mean, I built an app. Yeah, I will say that this type of app has existed for a while where you basically like digitally log all of your clothing. I find the like taking

a photo of it, cropping the background, like all of that work to be very, very, tedious. It's extremely. They usually lose me there. I think the problem that we're coming up against is the actual logging of the items that you have because there's no way AI is getting around that either. You have to manually take a picture of all of this sort of stuff. And like, I don't know if they still do this, but like look books, I think would be kind of polyvore. Do you remember polyvore? Oh my God. RIP. I haven't heard in 84 years. I know. I know. But yeah. So I think maybe one one way around it for those of us who are not particularly adept is to do a lookbook, which is you just create a little. I started in my camera role of going like, this outfit is fire.

Let me take a picture of it and add it to an album called Lookbook. Yeah. I also have an Outfits album. Yeah. So just photos. And there's like three in there. Right. I'm so lazy. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty, in terms of like logging things, the easiest thing is like you snap a photo of your before you leave. And actually, I did do something that I can share a screenshot of or just a quick clip of what I did. But if you have an iPhone, which I guess I shouldn't assume, but if you have an iPhone, you can take a photo of your outfit, open a notes document in the notes app, and then like long press on your body in the photo and copy it, and then just plop it into the notes app. And it's like a little sticker of yourself. And it removes the background. It does everything. And so I have a notes

app full of just like little miniature stickers of my outfits, of myself. And it kind of needs to be cleaned up a little bit, but I have just like a general feed of all of them. You can also click into them to see it bigger and then like swipe through it like a photo album. But crucially, what I use this for is outfits that I have worn to work things because that is like, I don't know about you, but women's professional wear is so, it's a curse. It's a absolute. It's a absolute. It's a It's just so, one, it's either not fun or it's not comfortable. Yeah. Or it's just like people notice if you wear the same thing too many times.

I've had some verge commenters and other commenters when I was at Gizmodo that are like, does she have another shirt? And I was like, oh, my God. That's so rude, first of all. But also point taken. Yeah, well, it's really hard to calibrate your personal style to the setting and like the tyranny of women's workwear. is something that I just will never, ever, ever surrender to. And Taylor. I'm not wearing that.

I'm sorry. I'm not wearing the like little blazer and pencil skirt vibe. I need to feel comfortable. Also like this video, this podcast, I need to find something that like looks kind of normal on screen that also I'm not having to go buy like a new wardrobe. So yeah, I have a section in my notes app that says work outfits. And when I don't know what I'm doing when it's a night before and I'm freaking out because I have nothing to wear to this.

conference or whatever, I will just like pick a little Mia sticker outfit to just recreate. That's genius. That's genius. I highly recommend. I am going to do that because like to your point, anytime there's like you're going to be on camera, you need to take a photo. I was like, oh God, what do I have? That is solid. That is not white. There's just like so many considerations that you have to think of. Not green. That how you'll come up on camera. Yeah, green you might just be a floating head. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, if you see us wear repeat outfits, don't say anything. Don't say anything, but that's the reason. It's because that's, it's, we don't have an infinite budget. Yeah. We don't have, we don't actually have shares closet, which is gigantic. I wish. Do we look like we're

wearing the same outfits? It's because we pre-taped some of these things. So what are we going to do, bring half of our closet in and switch out and all of that? No, that's just, although I have done that on certain occasions for certain videos, so that's just dedication. Yeah. If The Verge wants to create a closet for me in the Vox Media office, I will not say no. Jim Benkoff. Neelai. Nil. Neal. Nilai, can we have a Chera's closet that we share? Can we take over your office while you're on leave and make it into a closet? Yeah, what if we have a Sherer's closet that we can all share? Huh?

I like it. I like it, too. The last point I'll make, too, is, like, the AIification of this type of feature or tool. For me, it probably wouldn't work because so much of clothing is, like, tactile and sensory. And even though things like a shirt and then pants separately, like when you slide them next to each other, on top of each other, it looks normal. There are so many nuances to how clothing falls on the body that doesn't mean it will work. That's why you need to like try on outfits to see. That's the thing I have about that one guy in the TikTok, the fitted app, it's like you're taking pictures of the clothes but not on you.

Yeah. There's just certain ways that it's like, oh, theoretically this crop top and this pair of jeans would look good. But actually, that's not a high enough rise gene for me. So when I put it on, I don't like the way it looks, that sort of stuff. So, you know, AI is not always going to be able to distill what you like and what your personal style is. So, I don't know. I think kind of diminishing returns on something like that. For all the work that you would put into logging all of your clothing, me personally, it probably would not be worth it.

Maybe you're different, though. But I do really like the just like take a photo of your outfit. throwed in an album for when you really cannot be bothered to decide what to wear. Lookbooks. Look books are the answer. Go old school. I like it. Okay, that's it for The Vergecast.

Thank you to everyone on the show, and thank you for listening. There's a whole lot more stuff from this conversation at Theverge.com, and we will drop some links in the show notes, but also go read Theverge.com. You can find our bindlines there, and maybe even subscribe to The Verge. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, you can email us at vergecast at theverge.com or keep calling the hotline with all your great questions. That number is 866, Verge 1-1. I sound like an infomercial.

That number is 866, verge-11. We love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions and ideas for what we should do on this show. And we do a hotline question every week, so keep them coming, and we'll answer them. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew. Marino. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. Jake will be back on Friday to discuss all the news from the week, and thank you as always for listening. See ya.