Returns & Shipping
We encourage you to check our Size & Fit Guide and carefully consider your purchases before you complete your order.
If the colour or fit is not right, you may exchange or return any item within 14 days after you have received your package. To exchange or return your item, please request a Returns Merchandise Authorisation (RMA) number by emailing us at hello@thercollective.com.
Any items returned to us for exchange or refunds must be unworn, unwashed, with all the tags still attached. You are responsible for shipping the item(s) back to us so we recommend you to use a tracked delivery service. Return shipping costs are the responsibility of the customer. Unfortunately, we are unable to refund the initial postage costs on all domestic or international orders. Please allow up to 2 business days for us to process the exchange (dependent on stock availability) or refund upon receipt of your returned item.
In the unlikely event that we are unable to exchange the item for your preferred size or colour, you will be issued store credit to spend online.
Please note:
- All items must be returned new, unused and with all tags still attached within 14 days of receipt. Any returns that do not meet our policy will not be accepted and sent back to the customer.
- We encourage you to carefully consider your purchase and strive to offer you the best online shopping experience to make your decision making easier. We do monitor the number of exchange requests made by customers and kindly request a limit of one exchange per item. Repeated exchanges for a single order may lead to refusal by our team.
- Sale items cannot be returned or exchanged. No exceptions will be made for sizing, fit, or fabric issues. Should you have any product related queries, we encourage you to reach out to us at hello@thercollective.com before placing your order.
- All made-on-demand orders are non-refundable and cannot be cancelled once placed due to the custom and made-to-order processes involved. However, a one-time exchange for the same style is accepted against your first order.
- You are responsible for shipping the item(s) back to us so we recommend you to use a tracked delivery service. Return shipping costs are the responsibility of the customer. Unfortunately, we are unable to refund the initial postage costs on all domestic or international orders. Please allow up to 2 business days for us to process the exchange (dependent on stock availability) or refund upon receipt of your returned item.
- In the unlikely event that we are unable to exchange the item for your preferred size or colour, you will be issued store credit to spend online. (not valid on made-on-demand pieces)
In the unlikely event that you receive a faulty item, please email us at hello@thercollective.com within 48 hours of receiving your order with clear photos of the damage. We take quality control seriously and hope you won’t have to experience this. Upon receipt of your email, please allow 1-2 business days for us to review the situation so we can advise on the next steps for your exchange.
For in-stock orders: The orders are shipped within 48 hours to your door if customers are located in Hong Kong. The shipping is free for local Hong Kong orders. Orders can also be picked up from our studio space in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.
Delivery for international orders can take from 4-15 days depending on your location.
For made-on-demand orders: It will take two weeks to produce after purchase, and delivery can take from 4-15 days depending on your location from our factory. Shipping is free for all orders over USD $250, otherwise orders will be charged a flat shipping fee of USD $15.
You can find out more about our shipping & returns policy here.
All deliveries can be tracked using the tracking link sent to your email address upon shipping confirmation.
The cost of taxes and duties are enforced by the destination country customs department. We have no control over the customs, duties & tax charges. Please keep in mind that our shipping times should be used as a guide only and are based on the time from dispatch. We cannot take responsibility for customs clearance delays.
To ensure we ship to your destination, please check the shipping guide below:
IN STOCK ORDERS
Shipping Destination, Estimated Shipping Time, Shipping Fee
Hong Kong (1-2 working days): Free
Worldwide orders over USD $250 (4-15 working days): Free
Worldwide orders under USD $250 (4-15 working days): $15
MADE ON DEMAND ORDERS
Shipping Destination, Estimated Shipping Time, Shipping Fee
Hong Kong (3-4 weeks): Free
Worldwide orders over USD $250 (3-4 weeks): Free
Worldwide orders under USD $250 (3-4 weeks): $15
If your country or region is not listed, unfortunately, we do not ship to your destination. We’re working on it! Please email hello@thercollective.com if you need more assistance.
All our products are shipped from Hong Kong or Thailand. Any international order might be subject to Taxes & Duties. The cost of taxes and duties are enforced by the destination country customs department. We have no control over the customs, duties & tax charges.
Please keep in mind that our shipping times should be used as a guide only and are based on the time from dispatch. We cannot take responsibility for customs clearance delays.
If you wish to change your shipping address after you have placed your order, then please email us at hello@thercollective.com as soon as possible with your order number and your updated shipping address. We will do our best to accommodate your needs. But once an order is dispatched we will not be able to change its destination.
After you place your order, you will receive a confirmation email with your order number. We will then prepare your package for shipping. We dispatch all orders within 2 business days. Once we have dispatched your order, we will send you another email with your shipment confirmation details, which includes your tracking information so you can keep an eye on its progress.
That is always frustrating when a package goes awry. Once your items are shipped, however, we cannot be liable if it is lost or stolen. If your tracking number shows that your package has reached its destination and signed for, The R Collective will consider the package successfully delivered. However, if you did not receive it, you’ll need to contact the courier for more information.
Maybe you’ve heard of ‘food miles’, which is the distance food takes from farm to fork? Well there are ‘fashion miles’ too and we do our best to limit them. So we agonise over our supply chains for efficiency, use the best carriers as possible and we send our products, from fabrics to finished products, by land or sea as much as possible, instead of air. In rare fashion emergencies – if we need to get a sample back to our designers quickly – then we may need to use air, but this doesn’t make us feel good at all.
Product
We always aim for make sure our customers love our products, but if you do need to return an order, we’re happy to help. Just email us directly at hello@thercollective.com and we’ll take you through the process.
Please remember:
Sale items cannot be returned or exchanged. No exceptions will be made for sizing, fit, or fabric issues. Should you have any product related queries, we encourage you to reach out to us at hello@thercollective.com before placing your order.
All made-on-demand orders are non-refundable and cannot be cancelled once placed due to the custom and made-to-order processes involved. However, a one-time exchange for the same style is accepted against your first order.
It depends on the creator and the product. All options are outlined on the product page, so look out for customization options there.
Fabric Upcycling
It’s estimated that every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated and that every year, 92 million tons of textile waste is generated by the fashion industry. We want to capture some of this waste as our direct experience has shown us that so much of it is gorgeous, top quality fabrics that we know deserve to stay in wardrobes and not become waste. That is why we are focussed on rescuing and reusing these textile waste - instead of using virgin materials - to protect the environment whilst creating beautiful clothes that you will love.
It’s amazing! We think upcycling pre-existing materials that would otherwise be wasted - instead of using virgin materials - is one of the most immediately beneficial and impactful methods of making the fashion industry more sustainable. And the numbers back us up! Thanks to our partners, RESET Carbon, we conducted a life-cycle assessment on our first collection, analysing the environment impacts of every step of our own production processes using waste materials - instead of using virgin materials. The results suggest that our typical upcycled jackets have a 60% reduced carbon footprint compared with one made from virgin materials, which is equivalent to diverting 14,882 plastic bottles from landfill. (Of course, not buying any new clothes would create the most amount of savings!).
We’re sophisticated and stylish textile waste savers! Currently, we mainly upcycle luxury brands, mills and manufacturers’ gorgeous, top quality waste that has never been used before, which is often called deadstock or pre-consumer waste. We also take in textile swatches (which are leftover textile samples from production), sampling yardage (which are factory surplus waste leftover from textile sample manufacturing) to unsold, brand new clothing. We want to rescue as much top quality fabrics as possible, including natural and man-made fibres.
Yes, the fabrics that we rescue to reuse are in top quality condition and from reputable partners who themselves have quality supply chains and fabrics. We are committed to using quality fabrics only, because we value longevity and we only want to upcycle the best.
Yes! Our own team includes fabric experts - who collectively have spent nearly 100 years handling textiles - and so we first check the samples and their incoming test results, if we have them. We have a partnership with a world-leading testing and verification company who then retests our proposed fabrics for chemicals of concern and physical properties, like colour fastness, shrinkage and seam slip allowance, so that we only upcycle quality fabrics back into the fashion system. If our partners identify any weaknesses in the fabrics, then we do not upcycle them and instead we donate the fabrics to our charity partners, Redress.
In the past, we have upcycled post-consumer secondhand clothing into new garments, which is very challenging and also so needed in the industry, because there is so much waste out there. However, for now, our core focus is upcycling industry’s textile waste, rather than consumers’ clothing waste.
Whilst we are avid upcyclers, we do not upcycle secondhand textiles, like curtains and bedding, or real fur or exotic skins. Even though we would love to reduce all types of wastage, we have enough selection to other waste fabrics to contend with.
We strive to upcycle everything that comes in our path so that we reach as close to 100% upcycled as possible. Certainly all of the major components, like the fabrics and shell fabrics, are upcycled. Occasionally when it comes to a specific yarn, divs or zippers that we specifically need, we may need to source new. But we only do this when it is in the best interests of making your product stronger and more durable.
We are passionate about genuinely reducing waste. So we do not buy waste from jobbers, or textile traders, because we believe that these textile traders already have a market for their fabrics via their pre-existing buyers. Instead, we only rescue fabrics from our brand, mill and manufacturing partners who, for many reasons, can not get rid of their fabric excess via any other routes. So the fabrics that we take are nearing the end of their life and are most likely heading towards landfill because, sometimes, brands, mills and manufactures are not able to find any other options for their unwanted excess at the right time.
Currently we are not dying our fabrics because we simply love the fabrics we use as-is and so we don’t need to add extra chemical process to them. In the future, we may explore dying, if the fabric waste we have rescued is calling out for it.
There are a lot of beautiful fabrics that end up as ‘waste’ as a byproduct of fashion production. To give you an idea of the scale, it’s estimated that 15% of all fabrics ever produced never make it into the garment. Reports suggest that 92 million tons of textile waste is generated by the fashion industry every year, and this doesn’t even include consumer waste. Occasionally, unexpected events happen to a business that can result in huge spikes in fabric waste. For example, a business may downsize their warehousing, or a specific product line may be discontinued, or they may not be able to shift unwanted deadstock because of the time of year, or their usual range of jobbers are not looking to buy at that critical moment. That is why we rescue fabrics just in the nick of time to soak up our partners’ problems.
Sustainable Production
Our manufacturing partners are crucial to us as they make our dreams become reality. So we take selecting them seriously, in particular their social and environmental performance. We work closely with award-winning TAL Group, the highly successful and sustainable manufacturers with a long legacy of innovation and a deep commitment to their sustainable and ethical operations, who have their head office in Hong Kong and manufacturing facilities throughout Asia. We also work with Hong Kong social enterprise, Splendid, who provide working opportunities for people in the community who have employment and living needs.
We know and trust our partners. Our Code of Conduct stipulates that we must create a healthy work environment inside the factories and pay fair wages.
We have been to their factories many times, we sleep onsite at their dorms and eat with their workers and so we have a trustworthy relationship with them. We are really proud knowing that we are partnering into socially sustainable supply chains in which workers and the environment are treated respectfully.
Supporting Talent
We have our own in-house creative and design team who create our Main Collections and who also collaborate with various award-winning sustainable fashion designers from around the world. All of our designers in the collective are Alumni from The Redress Design Awards, the world’s largest sustainable fashion design competition that is organised by our sister charity, Redress.
We believe in empowering the world’s best sustainable fashion designers to bring their talent to market. For nearly a decade, through our work with Redress, we have witnessed how the next generation of fashion designers have fresh and fashion-forward ideas that can transform fashion. So we purposely scout the world’s best talent and then create the platform for them to unleash their ideas for a better future through their collections with us. This collective attitude of maximising shared values and brings about collaborative change.
Empowering Customers
We really want you to fall in love with clothes, and of course with The R Collective. Recently, we think clothes have become too throwaway and so we want to ramp up how much we respect and value clothes. The more you love your clothes, the better you will care for them, the more you will wear them and the more inspired you will be to style them over and over. We want you to keep your clothes in the fashion loop for as long as possible, to help reverse throwaway fashion trends. You can call us fans of SLOW fashion if you like. We think it’s simple. We hope The R Collective will be part of your conscious closet, but if not, that is also ok as there are already so many clothes out there and we don’t want to tell you to buy more!
We do not offer a free alteration or repair service, instead we encourage you to support your local community and to visit your local seamstress to repair common wear and tear. We have created your The R Collective product with generous seam allowances to make some repairs easier.
We do have a take back service for our customers, if they really need it. But before you part ways with your R Collective piece, we encourage you to swap it with a friend or reimagine how you can wear it with your existing wardrobe pieces. If you have already tried styling it in new ways and you don’t want to swap it with a friend and you really wish to part with it, then please send us an email to hello@thercollective.com or to to arrange the take back. We will need to ask you to cover the shipping costs back to Hong Kong. Once we receive your The R Collective product, we work with our sister charity, Redress to ensure that it continues working magic in the secondhand market.
We always strive to reduce the impact of our packaging - without risking damaging the product during transportation. Your items will be carefully wrapped in tissue paper and packaged in a cardboard carton or a shipping envelope depending on the size and weight of your items. We opt out of using any plastic poly bags when dispatching the garments to you to minimise our impact on the environment. However, we do use recycled plastic poly bags and waste poly bags given to us by manufacturers when transporting our goods from the factory to our fulfilment centre to protect the clothing during transit. We are working to look at alternative more sustainable options and strive to reuse the polybags wherever we can.
Other
You can contact us through our contact page! We will be happy to assist you.