NONA SOURCE

NONA SOURCE SLEEPING BEAUTIES

With the Nona Source project, luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is creating a platform for recycling deadstock from its fashion houses. These highquality textiles then have new life breathed into them by young industry newcomers.

ANCIELA PHOTO

Once upon a time in the Loire Valley, southwest of Paris, there were bolts and bolts of the finest French lace, buttery soft Italian leather and robust Shetland wool from Scotland, piled all the way up to the ceiling, that had fallen into a deep slumber. How else to describe these exquisite materials other than sleeping beauties, languishing away in the cavernous warehouses belonging to luxury corporation LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. After all, even high fashion and haute couture aren’t impervious to miscalculation and over-ordering, resulting in swathes of excess fabrics. Although the realities of resource scarcity are slowly seeping into the consciousness of even the luxury brands, reusing older fabrics for newer models is still unheard of. The premise of the luxury sector is that everything has to be the newest of the new. The exclusive LVMH Fashion & Leather Goods segment comprises 14 brands in all, including prestigious names like Loewe, Berluti, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Christian Dior. And all of them generate a vast amount of fabric surplus that ends up neglected and forgotten in warehouses. So what’s the best way to tackle all this textile waste? Marie Falguera, Romain Brabo and Anne Prieur du Perray have come up with a solution that sounds logical and pragmatic but is completely new: they founded Nona Source, the first platform for reusing the major corporation’s luxury surplus materials. All experts from different departments of LVMH, they established the start-up as part of the DARE programme (Disrupt, Act, Risk to be an Entrepreneur) that aims to accelerate and support innovative and environmentally friendly solutions. In April 2021, the Nona Source platform started offering treasures that would otherwise still be gathering dust in warehouses. As the warehouses are in France, the platform is currently only active in Europe and the UK. The aim is to simplify logistics, as well as keeping the ecological footprint small. But the real secret to success lies in their pricing structures: because what newcomer to the fashion industry can afford haute couture prices for fabrics? Silk, lace and the like would simply just be left on the shelf. That’s why they decided to offer the fabrics at new and competitive prices – slashed to as much as 70 percent off the original amount. Nona Source is open to everyone, from major competitors to emerging designers, who can currently choose from around 1,000 different materials.

DIGITAL DOES IT

Planningof the Nona Source project posed one major obstacle for the developers: when it comes to choosing materials, look and feel are always key. To allow people to discover the textiles without having to travel all the way to the warehouse in France, they came up with a technology that enables particularly highquality visuals and lets you see an accurate rendering of a fabric’s texture on your smartphone without needing to hold the fabric in your hands. Videos show the textures in action and draping them on wooden mannequins demonstrates the way a material falls and its sheen. How much of each fabric or leather is then actually available depends on the deadstock quantities. But it is exactly this approach that is becoming increasingly important in the world of fashion. Because in a world where our resources are steadily growing scarcer and more valuable, we need all the creativity we can muster. And despite the technology being modern, the inspiration behind this project is as ancient as can be: Nona is one of three goddesses of fate from Roman mythology. As the youngest of three, she spins the thread of life, while Decuma weaves it, and Morta cuts the thread that ends every life.

NAMES TO REMEMBER

Nona Source is now celebrating its first year in business. And the project is hugely successful – countless exciting newcomers and established brands are reaching out to make use of the ‘sleeping beauties’ of the world of couture. So you could soon be wearing brightly coloured silks by Emilio Pucci or the finest leather by Fendi – without even knowing it. Not that it would really interest the clientele of this project, as they are so very different from the usual customers in the luxury fashion universe. Take, for example, young fashion brand Vesqmojo, which has built its entire concept on the unconventional use of recycled fabrics. Its new collection called ‘Dysmorphic Diving’ embraces futuristic cuts that combine high-tech with industrial materials. And London-based fashion label Anciela celebrates Colombian culture: for its latest collection, ‘The Dance of the Migrant’, it used yellow tricotine and blue silk from Nona Source and paired them with biodegradable buttons made from nut shells. And, with her eponymous Parisian label, Jeanne Friot is showing us how the fashion of the future should look: genderless, environmentally friendly and manufactured only in limited quantities to avoid overproduction. Her vision – the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights and the revival of French artisan tradition – is palpable in every design. Designer Benjamin Benmoyal is also a recycling expert: for his latest designs, he has not only used recycled VHS tapes, which is how he made his name, but is also breathing new life into fabrics from Nona Source.

THE LUXURY BRAND OF THE FUTURE?

Projects like Nona Source are part of LVMH’s new ‘LIFE 360’ plan. Their strategy for environmentally awareness and resource-efficiency is based on four main tenets: protecting biodiversity by researching solutions with UNESCO; fighting climate change by reducing CO2 emissions that are not directly linked to product manufacturing, but result from other stages in the product lifecycle, including transportation, procurement and use, by improving the energy performance of its sites and stores; ensuring more transparency to address the expectations of society for better traceability; and last but not least, strengthening the circular economy through initiatives such as recycling unsold products, upcycling by making garments from existing stocks, as well as researching alternative materials.