PARIS — A Balenciaga garment made from the recycled fibers of a Max Mara camel coat. That’s the reality for a growing number of brands embracing the circular economy, a hot topic at recent Première Vision Paris and Texworld shows here.
“You see mills that are starting to weave fabrics with fibers recycled from plastic bottles, discarded clothes, discarded polyesters. Materials are freshly rewoven with these fibers and they look really luxurious, they look perfect,” said Olivier Theyskens, jury president of the 10th anniversary of the PV Awards.
Held Sept. 19 to Sept. 21 at the Parc des Expositions in Paris Nord Villepinte, the show for the first time exceeded the 2,000 exhibitor mark, with 190 new companies. The edition also saw the launch of the Marketplace Première Vision via a physical space, allowing visitors to experiment and test out the platform.
One of the main challenges for recycled fibers, explained Francois Souchet, director of Make Fashion Circular at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, is the loss of quality and lack of real technologies available at scale.
“When we talk to luxury brands, one of the main concerns is, ‘Is this fabric very durable? Can it compete with the level of quality that we want to
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