Fashionable without hurting the environment

Fashion industry is heavily supported by plastics from the synthetic materials used to produce clothing, bags and other fashion accessories, creating stylish and even customized features to catch the eyes of consumers.

The fast-paced fashion industry is always abuzz with new products for each season. From clothes, jewellery, footwear, bags and other accessories, the fashion world is always on the lookout for new materials that fuel the creative spirit of designers and manufacturers, and capture the fancy of buyers.

But the fashion industry is reaching a turning point as leading fashion brands are becoming more concerned on environmental issues that their buyers have focused on.

As one of the first fashion designers to launch environmentally-friendly and green products, Stella McCartney uses textiles such as recycled polyester, sustainable viscose hemp and other organic materials for her fashion collection, of which Koba Fur Free Fur is popular. The sustainable fur is made of 100% DuPont™ Sorona® plant-based fibers, an alternative to animal furs. The material can be recycled and reused without waste, and with less greenhouse gases produced as against conventional synthetic materials.

Stella McCartney’s Koba Fur Free Fur is made of 100% DuPont™ Sorona® plant-based fibers.

Another brand, Girlfriend Collective, produces sports bras and leggings from recycled plastics, water bottles and fishing nets. The company’s recycling center in Taiwan is where bottles are sorted, cleaned and recycled. The LITE leggings produced by the company are made from ECONYL fiber, which is derived from recycled fishing nets.

Sports bras and leggings made from recycled plastics, water bottles and fishing nets.

Inditex, the company that owns high street fashion brand Zara, has committed to produce all its clothing from 100% sustainable materials. By 2025, Inditex will only use cotton, linen and polyester that is organic, more sustainable or recycled.

Inditex commits to produce all Zara clothing from 100% sustainable materials by 2025.

Another leading fashion brand, H&M has teamed up with Danone AQUA for the bottle2fashion project, where plastic bottle waste from across the islands of Indonesia is transformed into recycled polyester. In 2021, bottle2fashion collected and recycled over 7.5 million PET bottles, more than double the volume from 2020 of 3.5 million. The recycled polyester is used in the production of the popular H&M Kids collection.

Source: www.chinaplasonline.com

H&M has teamed up with Danone AQUA for bottle2fashion project

Knitting Yarns Collection Spring Summer 23 by Marchi & Fildi and Filidea at Pitti Filati

Pitti Filati: young talents of ITS TAM interpret the “waistcoat”, sustainable, gender fluid and seasonless iconic garment, using the yarns of Marchi & Fildi and Filidea collections

During the 90th edition of Pitti Filati at the Marchi & Fildi and Filidea booths, original garments will be on show which have been developed by 2nd-year students of the course for Higher Technician for Design and Development of Knitwear Products at the ITS TAM (Higher Institute for Textiles, Clothing and Fashion) in Biella.

The project’s primary garment is the waistcoat, offering visitors to the booths garments capable of interpreting the yarns in a contemporary way and embodying the key values of the brands Marchi & Fildi, ECOTEC® and Filidea.

Rediscovered by fashion in recent collections, the waistcoat is a unisex, seasonless garment, and constitutes an “easy”, basic garment for all types of interpretation; a creative representation of the values of modern fashion research:

Sustainable - Gender exchange - Seasonless

With the supervision of Fausto Caletti, the stylist that has been developing the yarns collection of Marchi & Fildi and Filidea, and the ITS TAM professors, students have created the waistcoats in knitwear using yarns from the Spring/Summer 2023 collections in the colours included in the overview cards. During their creative work, the students measured themselves not only in terms of the ideation of the finished garments, but also the total number of the steps for their execution within the framework of the project.

Every waistcoat on show will be numbered and identified with the name of the student who created it. Coming into the booth, it will be possible to admire all of them.

Filidea fashion yarns

The Filidea Spring/Summer 2023 collection consolidates its position in the medium-high sector for knitwear yarns.

The essential elements for the brand identity are confirmed as being at the centre of its value offer: the choice of natural fibres and biodegradable blends, the attention to the performance of the yarns together with the sensibility of the fashion world and the environmental sustainability of the whole supply chain.

All the yarns of the collection are dyed in the internal dyeing mill of the Marchi & Fildi Group, which has a low environmental impact. The Study Life Cycle Assessment carried out in 2020 demonstrates an average of -48% water used for each kg of yarn dyed, -43% in the steam consumption and -57% of energy use, in comparison to a traditional plant.

The offer revolves around three families of cotton, linen and silk blends, confirming the references of the latest summer season, the presence of GOTS-certified cottons and the innovative blends such as the blend of silk and Bemberg™ Cupro, the GRS-certified regenerated cellulose.

Fine and extra-fine yarns prevail, as they are ideal for the knitwear that takes its style from sophistication and formal simplicity. The exception is Zoran, a cotton tape which is the perfect solution for creative structures and fancies.

The colour card maintains its elegant, classy orientation towards the seasonal colours of nature, with sandy, earthy tones, browns and warm flamed tones fading into beige and neutral hues. Stock availability for samples has been increased. Jacques, a compact cotton with a soft, caressing hand in two counts, fine and extra-fine, and characterised by an opaque look to transmit a stylishly natural atmosphere is to be found amongst the new items with which the Filidea offer has been enhanced. Albert proposes a refined summer blend of cotton and linen with a natural, light hand and uneven textures with the slight irregularities typical of linen. Also new is the combination of silk and cotton in Philippe, in a skilful balance of exquisiteness, lustre and natural feeling. The new yarns in the collection are distinguished by the choice of the most topical colours: trendy, saturated and intense tones which even go as far as fluo.

Marchi & Fildi fashion yarns

The orientation towards yarns which are sustainable, certified and using circular economy processes takes on ever more importance in the collection.

ECOTEC® technology, which uses pre- and post-consumer waste products to create yarns of superior quality,characterises a number of proposals in the collection, for the most part with GRS certification. Alongside the bestsellers in cotton-based blends (Nilo, Victoria, Pegasus, Polaris) or Lenzing™ Ecovero™ viscose (Palatio), some novelties stand out for using linen as the main ingredient.

Acapulco (viscose, linen and acrylic fibres) and Lima (ECOTEC® cotton, linen and acrylic fibres) are both characterised by a naturally faded look and the elegant worn effect of the surface which enhances the rusticity of the linen.