DHL and Eric Wong upcycle courier uniforms into playful accessories

DHL Express took retired courier uniforms and pushed them into the accessories lane, teaming with Hong Kong designer Eric Wong on a limited-run collection that went on sale after a June 17, 2026 announcement. Wong, who won the Redress Design Award 2025 DHL GoGreen Plus Alumni Prize, reworked old DHL polo shirts and cargo pants into the DHL x Absurd Laboratory BFFS Upcycled Collection, with sales running through The Absurd Laboratory, Midwest Vintage stores and The Redress Closet.

The pieces lean playful rather than precious: a convertible bucket hat and sling bag, unisex clogs and bear pendants with movable limbs. That matters, because uniforms are usually the least glamorous material in fashion’s recycling playbook. They are practical, branded hard and made for wear, not desirability. Here, the point was to turn that corporate sameness into objects people might actually want to carry, clip on or slip into a summer rotation.

The collection was built from retired DHL gear once worn by the company’s roughly 100,000 staffers, which gives the project a real waste stream behind the styling. Still, the scale question hangs over it. A limited drop can show what is possible with debranded workwear, but it does not yet answer how many uniforms can be captured, sorted and redesigned when the novelty wears off and the brand wants a repeatable system instead of a headline-grabbing capsule.

Redress is the right partner for that harder conversation. The Hong Kong-based, Asia-focused environmental NGO has run the Redress Design Award since 2011 and uses it to push circular fashion talent into the market. It also has the kind of scale context this story needs: its Get Redressed Month 2026 clothing drive collected 14.8 tonnes of pre-loved clothing, a blunt reminder that the region’s textile afterlife is measured in heavy, messy volumes, not neat little accessories.

DHL said all profits from the collection will be donated to Redress, and it added another sustainability layer by shipping international orders through GoGreen Plus, its service that reduces CO2e emissions through Sustainable Aviation Fuel. The collection was also sold through The Redress Closet and at the Redress 2026 summer secondhand pop-up from June 23 to June 28, 2026. That makes the project feel less like a runway wink and more like a test case: whether uniform-to-retail reuse can move from a one-off concept to a durable diversion channel with real volume, consistent design rules and a sale path that can survive beyond one season’s worth of buzz.