Black Phoenix Sneaker

Vaer exists because Lili Dreyer's master's thesis asked whether textile waste could be upcycled at scale rather than piece by piece, and the job applications that followed all came back as rejections. She built a sneaker instead, first under the name Wair and then as Vaer, growing the take-back loop and the Portuguese workshop out of that first pair. She grew up in Denmark, the daughter of a Danish father and a Chinese mother, and studied sustainability, entrepreneurship and design in London before any of it began.