Upcycling allowed Aspinall to reconnect with her grandmother in ways she had not expected. When she found out her grandmother had made this dress for her trousseau (clothes and belongings collected by a bride for their marriage), Matilda discovered new stories about her.

“She’d come to England around the interwar period after living in the Dutch East Indies. She had married an Englishman and although her family lived there for generations; they were Dutch colonialists,” says Matilda. Her grandmother had moved with her young daughter and couldn’t get back to her home because of the war. “Through repurposing this dress, I re-engaged with this woman on a different level, not just as her granddaughter,” she says. “My artistic practice was a tribute to who she was and her life.”

TV presenter Sabrina Grant had her sister Raquel’s jeans repurposed into two new jackets during BBC Two’s Saved And Remade, a programme on upcycling preloved items, which Grant hosts.

Sabrina was 24 when she lost her 32-year-old sister Raquel suddenly in 2010 to suicide. “[She] was such a supporter of me and my career, and I thought Saved And Remade was a perfect opportunity to get it transformed to be something very special,” she tells Stylist.

“It keeps her alive”: the women coping with grief by upcycling their late loved ones’ clothes