What is RCI Reserve?

RCI Reserve is short for the REESE COOPER® Reserve Program.  A new ongoing project where in simple terms, we up-cycle everything we’ve been keeping in the office for the past few years into new garments.  With every season comes sampling & production, where both cycles leave some leftover materials.  This can be fabrics, linings, snaps, zippers, ribbing, eyelets, screens, yarns, cording… the list goes on.  Over the past 5 or so years we’ve made it a point to not throw anything out with the goal of finding it a home later down the road.

 

When designing the first Reserve pieces, we gave ourselves a few rules.

1. A fabric cannot be used for the same purpose it was originally intended for
2. No new patterns can be created
3. All pieces have to find a way to incorporate a patch pocket made of raw natural canvas

 

By building out this framework, it becomes surprisingly freeing to have fun with new ideas.

 

The leather hooded jacket that was previewed is a great summary of the project.  The leather was leftover from our AW22 varsity jacket production run & handbag development.  The zipper is from our SS22 sampling time period, the hardware is excess from various production cycles.

 

Each piece is finished with the special Reserve label.  This gets filled out by hand on the day of completion.  There is also a new RC Sleeve Patch for new special projects like this, or anything non “mainline.”

 

Explore the online release of RCI Reserve here.

Browse More Issues