The ragpicker of Brooklyn works out of a 750-square-foot storefront a few blocks east of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, down a mostly residential side street in Williamsburg, where Hasidim and hipsters mix.

The ragpicker of Brooklyn sews in the back, behind a makeshift wall sprouting a riot of scraps. Under the pattern-cutting table there are bins of scraps of scraps, sorted by color (red and yellow and blue and black), and on one wall are shelves of Mason jars containing gumball-size scraps of scraps of scraps; up front are clothing rails, and a dressing room canopied by a lavish waterfall of castoff cuttings that flows down onto the floor like a Gaudí sand castle.

The ragpicker of Brooklyn, whose name is Daniel Silverstein and whose nom de style is Zero Waste Daniel, looks like a fashion kid, which he is (or was). He is 30 and tends to dress all in black, with a black knit cap on his head, and went to the Fashion Institute of Technology and interned at Carolina Herrera and even was on a fashion reality TV show.

And the ragpicker of Brooklyn would rather not be called that at all.

“I prefer to think of it as Rumpelstiltskin, spinning straw into gold,” Mr. Silverstein said one day in early November. He was on West 35th Street, in the garment district, with his partner and husband, Mario DeMarco (also all in black). They were hauling home sacks of cuttings from their own production run at HD Fashion, which also makes clothes for Rag & Bone and Donna Karan’s Urban Zen line.