Enter Fabscrap, a non-profit organisation is dedicated to recycling and reusing textiles that are unsuitable for donation. Every day, 3,000 pounds (some 1,350 kilos) of scraps arrive at the group's massive warehouse in Brooklyn - part of a huge complex that used to belong to the US Army, according to Fabscrap founder Jessica Schreiber. The organisation has established partnerships with about 250 ready-to-wear labels and several haute couture houses - and the waste they collect is representative of that variety.

There is everything in the warehouse piles from luxury pieces by the likes of Oscar de la Renta or Marc Jacobs, to mainstream retail labels like J Crew, to scraps from the workshops of up-and-coming designers. Last year, Fabscrap picked up a total of 150,000 pounds of fabric.