Giving old sweaters ‘Anu’ life: Greenfield business celebrates one year of upcycling cashmere into new winter sportswear

What started as an athlete’s personal quest for plastic-free workout gear has evolved into Anu, a Greenfield-based brand giving old cashmere sweaters a new lease on life.

One year into her journey of upcycling used sweaters into neck warmers, founder Cristina Marcalow has saved a massive amount of cashmere from ending up in local landfills. Operating out of Wells Street, the winter clothing company was created by Marcalow — an avid rock climber, runner and skier. Although Anu originally launched in early 2025 as a cashmere kids’ clothing line, it was rebranded as an outdoor gear brand last June after “life reasons” required Marcalow’s business partner to step away, leaving her to run the venture solo.

This solo pivot allowed Marcalow to merge her athletic lifestyle with her business vision. The catalyst for the shift came from a frustrating realization about the very gear she relied on for her outdoor adventures: it was overwhelmingly synthetic.

“I’m an athlete, and so separately in my personal life, while we were working on Anu, I started exploring ‘how to transform my wardrobe as an athlete?’ All of my clothing was plastic — every single article.” Marcalow said. “I would go to exercise and everything I was putting on my body was plastic or like coated with PFAS ( per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) … When you walk into an outdoors store, almost every item in the store is plastic. I was thinking about that and I underwent a personal project of transforming my wardrobe into all-natural fibers.”

Marcalow said her interest in reducing her use of and exposure to polyester, plastics and petroleum-based products began much earlier.

“I was in the corporate world for a while, and I really liked my job, but it was lighting me up,” Marcalow said. “A few years ago, my father passed away, and my mother had already passed away — both from cancer. And so, I was thinking a lot about exposure to environmental toxins and confronting death, and it made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life.”

Marcalow noted she is not a lifelong sewist, and Anu is not the tale of a hobby-turned-business. Instead, she wanted to create a business with the goal of reducing exposure to microplastics and toxins in outdoor wear. She learned to sew and developed the skills to make her goal happen. She added that she knew she wanted to use natural fibers in her product and decided to make her neck warmers out of secondhand materials as well.

“Upcycling is happening in different segments of the market right now. There are a lot of people making beautiful products, but it is an untouched part of the market in terms of this outdoor space,” Marcalow said. “It does feel like Anu is different in this segment of the market. It is bringing some of that thought around reusing what we already have, reducing our environmental footprint and reliance on new raw materials and bringing that into the outdoor space.”

She works with a recycled-textiles distributor that collects donated materials and sells her old cashmere sweaters. Marcalow said she then washes and sorts them, determining which sweaters can be turned into specific parts of the neck warmer pattern and which fabrics look best together. She added that every product is unique because each warmer is made from different sweaters.

Every neck warmer is cut to the same standard dimensions: 9.5 to 10 inches tall by 7.5 to 8 inches wide. Marcalow explained that because cashmere is a naturally stretchy material, a single size comfortably fits a wide range of people. In fact, the exact same neck warmer she wears also fits her toddler.

Marcalow also noted that every neck warmer is also shaved and treated to reduce pilling, making the old sweaters look like fresh cashmere. Like all sewing projects, there are still scraps left over, meaning she is not able to recycle every piece of the sweater. However, she saves as much as she can and works around blemishes and holes in the materials. The name Anu is wordplay, Marcalow said, denoting that the company is giving old sweaters “a new” life as a neck warmer.

Marcalow described Anu’s debut season as a major success when reflecting on the past year of selling winter wear. Her neck warmers were featured in 13 different New England ski shops, including local shelves at Outer Limits Cycle & Ski and the Greenfield Farmers Cooperative Exchange. They can also be purchased online at made-anu.com, and cost $75 each.

“It was really amazing to feel the validation there,” Marcalow said. “Every ski shop that I went to, they bought product from me and that was really exciting.”

Marcalow said she works with local sewists in her studio to make the neck warmers and dreams of eventually expanding the business to hire staff and potentially add other products. One idea includes cleaning and reselling sweaters that come to her with no damage and “are too nice to cut up.”

“There’s a real commitment to making good use of the material we have, and if it doesn’t need to be cut into, then trying to get it back into the use stream,” Marcalow said.

As the business continues to grow, she said she hopes her neck warmers make people consider the plastics and chemicals in the environment and on their bodies.

“Even if it just makes somebody think about it, a neckwarmer is so small, but I’m hoping as you hold it, you’re thinking about how it doesn’t have to be that way,” Marcalow said. “Maybe it’s a crack into people’s mentalities on how they could approach the rest of their outdoor wardrobe.”