PNJ Vintage Runway Int’l is a made in Nigeria Corporate, Urban and Afrocentric Environmental and Ethical Conscious Clothing and Accessories brand. We source dead stock, vintage & secondhand clothes and fabrics, upcycle and turn them into new designs with a zero-waste production approach.

Our Vision
Our vision is born of a belief in the planet, humanity and human dignity and a market need for a
well-designed, affordable and sustainable fashion products. We take an integrated approach and consider people, planet and design in our work. We want to totally redesign the way clothes are made and used, a circular fashion industry which is sourcing vintage and secondhand clothes and fabrics. Recycle, Reuse & Repurpose; we rent, resale, repair, and refurbish. We want to let the world know that with our unique designs, making eco-friendly, ethical fashion choices doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be fashionable and you’re not going to be cool because we’re in the business of creating unique, fashionable and timeless pieces.

Our Mission
Our mission is to be a force for good in the fashion industry. To create beautiful, high quality, handcrafted clothing and accessories with an African touch through equitable relationships and sustainable practices within the fashion industry. To work directly with artisans at every step in the production process. We predominantly source all of our fabrics and materials from African suppliers who sell deadstock (unused) fabrics, or recycled afrocentric materials and all productions are made with integrity and kindness by our skilled artisans in Lagos, Nigeria. We ensure fair wages and pay for all our workers and we make the working environment conducive. We do our best everyday to utilize the sources within our home country, Nigeria as a means to support our local farmers, talents and community. We have a zero-waste approach to garment production and seek to minimize waste in all our processes.

Our Story
Sustainable development according to the UN Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,”. Every year millions of tonnes of clothes are produced, worn, and thrown away. Every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truck load of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill. The fashion industry is one of the major contributors of plastic microfibers entering our oceans. We love making beautiful and unique clothes, but hate the path of destruction the fast fashion industry is leaving on the planet’s environment and humanity. To solve the problem, we want to reinvent fashion itself by taking the old and making it new again; we source vintage and secondhand clothes and fabrics, upcycle and turn them into new designs. We seek to restore the balance between people & planet with regards to fashion. What’s better than producing sustainable fabrics? Using materials that already exist and otherwise may have gone to the landfill. We simply source and rework materials that normally would be considered garbage to create something new instead of contributing to the production waste or impact typical of new clothing manufacturers.

OUR VALUES
For us at PNJ Vintage Runway Int’l, sustainable fashion is not just about what material we use or reuse, but also how a garment or product is made, who made it, in what working conditions was it produced, what resources were used to produce it, and how it was sold, and purchased while considering the impact of its existence on the environment and eventually how it will die or get reused. Sustainable refers to the whole business, not just the clothes. Over sixty percent of clothes made every year end up in landfills and almost twenty percent of the world’s waste is made of fashion products. Take for instance, in the US, 11.3 million tons of textiles get disposed of each year. This equals 2150 garments per second! Consumers aren’t the only ones contributing to the waste problem. Fashion brands also landfill or burn unsold stock. This endless stream of disposable fashion has immense consequences for the environment. With the fast fashion industry’s carbon dioxide emissions expected to rise to nearly 2.8 billion tonnes by 2030, fashion brands and consumers alike are waking up to its detrimental impact on the planet. How about the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka District, Bangladesh in which over 1,129 people died after being forced to work in a dilapidated textile factory building (despite warnings from workers of cracks in the ceiling). There are too many hidden costs to the fast fashion system. These costs deplete natural resources, exacerbate climate change, harm wildlife, and impact our health. We seek to reduce pressure on resources in order to restore the balance between people and planet with regards to fashion by taking an integrated and sustainable approach in our work. We adhere to all fair labor standards in all our in-house production and partner with artisan textile producers in Nigeria who are social enterprises and work to the same ethical standard. We support artisan handmade at every step along our supply chain and promote artisan craft whenever possible. We develop long-term working relationships with artisan printers, weavers and with women artisans who produce handcrafted afrocentric fabrics. We utilize the resources within our home country as a means to support our local farmers and artisans. We celebrate the stories, cultures and traditions of our people. By acknowledging the stories behind our clothings, we can create a space to not stand at odds with these histories, but to discover how these rich histories play into our own lives, and what it means for people from other tribes to wear a dress from a culture with stories different than theirs. Our pieces are worn all around the world, including the places where they’re made and places very far away. It’s really important to us that the story of the African textiles and production are told at every step of the way, and that our values of inclusion, economic empowerment and community are shared throughout.