Beyond the economic principle of satisfying individual needs, production and consumption adhere to a broader principle of social reproduction. Practices such as “potlach" and “dépense” stand in opposition to the notion of utility, turning “wasteful expenditure” into forms of social differentiation and reciprocity. What remains outside the individual production-consumption cycle can be thus reintegrated into the social circuit as exchange material. Fashion has always fulfilled this social function, regulating the exchange and communication of signifying differences up to their complete evanescence and exposure in the concept of “look”. In contemporary environmental crisis, fashion itself must grapple with the materiality of its own “accursed share”, which requires to be embraced into a global ecological circuit that exceeds both economic flows and social “imagescapes”.Taking into account operations of fashion designers such as Iris Van Herpen, John Galliano, and fashion projects such as Noloom, Riforma, and Peekaboo, the aim of this paper is to analyze contemporary practices of upcycling that stress on the irreducible materiality of their products. A renewed focus on the material aspect of these fashion signs does not imply their reduction to inert objects, but substantiates and transform their symbolical and social value.The circularity of up-cycling considers not only the temporal trajectory of fashion objects, but also their spatial dimension, their environmental impact, in terms of physical relationships with other social bodies. It is through these forms of social reassembly and bodily hybridization that we can trace the agency of fashion products, emancipating them from a traditional (anti-)fetishistic interpretation.