Mystic Moods Founder Alina Stanila on Fashion's

Alina Stanila, founder and creative director of the UK-based circular fashion studio Mystic Moods, argues the industry's sustainability problem extends beyond the shop floor. She says the key opportunity starts after a customer checks out.

Stanila launched her seasonless womenswear brand after becoming uncomfortable with the volume of leftover fabric treated as waste in 2022. She describes seeing a massive gap between deadstock materials and their final destination in recycling centres or landfills. "So much work in mills goes into making fabric. To actually see that being discarded didn’t sit really well with me," she says. Consequently, Mystic Moods designs garments by first sourcing deadstock and reclaimed fabrics, then deciding what each material's weight and character can become.

The App-First Ownership Journey

While Mystic Moods began as a fashion business, its distinctive retail play is now digital. Stanila built the Mystic Moods app to provide customers with visibility into a garment's making, materials, and post-purchase lifecycle. The goal is to move beyond sustainability claims to practical ownership. "My idea was to give a roadmap to what happens after you buy a garment," Stanila explains. She notes that as a small business, gaining credibility is hard, and the app serves as a tool to demonstrate their sustainable practices directly to customers.

The app allows users to understand a garment's provenance, access care instructions, and identify routes for resale, repair, donation, or recycling. A key feature is a location-based map that shows nearby charity shops or recycling centres. "If a customer lives in London, it will track the customer in London," Stanila says. The ambition is to ensure a well-made garment does not end up in landfill.

From Post-Purchase to Platform Scaling

The proposition is framed as a shift in customer retention, moving communication beyond discount emails to a service-led relationship. Stanila stresses the app's importance as an after-sale tool to bring customers back for support, not only for sales.

Mystic Moods is now developing the app into a wider platform for other brands to use. The aim is to help retailers collect cleaner data on what happens to garments after they are sold-whether they are passed on, returned, donated, or recycled. "We want to onboard other brands, to gather as much data as possible on what happens with the garment after a customer buys it," Stanila states. She acknowledges that for larger retailers with thousands of SKUs, the platform must be simplified, which is her current focus.

The Economics of Local Production

Stanila is candid about the profitability challenges of producing locally in small quantities to avoid overproduction. "It is a lot harder making everything here," she admits. However, she argues the model works if the business avoids high-volume ordering and trend-led stock cycles. Keeping production in the UK is manageable with less stock, representing a long-term win within her brand's concept.

The app and planned platform are integral to this commercial strategy, not mere add-ons. Stanila sees technology, accessories like jewellery and handbags, and additional product lines as key revenue streams. These support the more expensive choice to maintain local fashion production. "If we keep only to the fashion, we only see one revenue stream," she notes.

Stanila concludes that the future of fashion technology is not about making sustainability sound sophisticated, but about providing clearer ways to keep garments in use longer. For Mystic Moods, fashion comes first, but the retail lesson is digital: the customer relationship cannot end at the transaction.