Over the past ten years, there has been a significant shift in the perception of sustainability in the fashion industry. This has been partly due to a substantial increase in consumer awareness regarding fashion's environmental and social impacts. This has led to a growing demand for sustainable and ethical fashion options, leading designers and brands to carefully consider how they design and create.
Recycled plastic can be used to create luxurious and high-quality products. The perception of luxury is often associated with factors like craftsmanship, design, and materials. Recycled plastic can be transformed into high-end products through careful processing, innovative design, and skilled craftsmanship.
Several brands and designers have successfully incorporated recycled plastic into their luxury offerings. They utilise advanced techniques to clean, process, and refine recycled plastic, creating materials that can rival traditional ones in quality and appearance.
For example, luxury fashion houses have started to incorporate recycled plastic fibres into their clothing and accessories. Similarly, designers have created high-end pieces using recycled plastic materials in the furniture industry. These products showcase sustainability and demonstrate that recycled materials can be both elegant and desirable.
Ultimately, the luxury of a product is not solely determined by the materials used but also by the creativity, skill, and attention to detail put into its creation. When recycled plastic is handled with the same care and expertise as traditional materials, it can be a luxurious and sustainable option.
The decision as to whether a material is luxurious is somewhat subjective, but to us, luxury is not merely an expensive price tag or scarcity. In the modern age of fashion and all its many interpretations, luxury has become a reflection of the brand or designer rather than the materials they use. Here, we talk about rPET, so let's begin by understanding what rPET is and how it is made.
Change in perceptions - designers & brands using rPET.
Once a product has served its purpose and is recycled, it is considered post-consumer content. Our material is made from 100% post-consumer content.
Once the bottles are salvaged, the next step is to shred them into tiny pieces and separate out the caps and labels. The caps of plastic bottles are a different kind of plastic than the PET bottle itself. After the material is shredded, it is left to dry before being processed through a machine called an extruder.
The plastic is heated and forced through tiny holes which resemble something like a shower head to create long, continuous fibres. Then, they are torn apart into short pieces, bailed and sent for spinning into yarn. At this point, the fibre closely resembles wool. The yarn is ultimately made into a fabric, of which various thicknesses and quality are used in the fashion and textiles industry today.
When plastic bottles are recycled they can be made into lots of things: t-shirts, sweaters, fleece jackets, insulation for jackets and sleeping bags, carpeting and more bottles. It takes about 10 bottles to make enough plastic fiber to make a cool new t-shirt. It takes 63 bottles to make a sweater. (1)
rPET yarn produces a polyester fabric and is almost the same as virgin polyester in terms of quality, but its production requires 60 percent less energy compared to virgin polyester.
Many luxury leather wallet brands use polyester or nylon lining fabrics, but these are usually produced from virgin petroleum based material.
Our initial design meetings were dominated by conversation around the lining of our collection, and we were keen to utilise a material which required fewer resources.
We explored a number of fabrics which are inherently hard to recycle, such as used balloon silks and spinnaker sails, but all were not suitable. We were passionate about using a fabric which would either end up in a landfill, was not easily recycled or that came from recycling a waste product. More importantly, it had to look, feel and be a quality lining material.
After several weeks of searching and testing samples, we finally found a rPET fabric that was superior in quality to any before. The company was in Asia and its sustainability and green credentials aligned with our brand values. Alongside recycling plastic bottles, they also work with ECONYL® regenerated nylon, a product introduced in 2011 by Aquafil. It is made entirely from ocean and landfill waste, such as industrial plastic, fabric scraps from clothing manufacturing companies, old carpets and "ghost nets".
Our planet is overflowing with waste, and we believe that all suppliers and manufacturers have the opportunity to rethink how they design, what materials they use and the impact their supply chain has on our environment.
Absolutely. Our woven rPET lining material is made for us using a weave we have chosen. The weave is visible, thick and strong. It has a shimmering finish, and each colour is exclusively dyed for us.
It begs the question: if we can reduce the environmental impact of fashion by reducing, reusing and recycling waste materials without compromising on quality, shouldn’t we all be doing that?
You can read more about our materials here.
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REFERENCES
(1) recycleandrecoverplastics.org
