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Proof Collective has launched the world’s first water repellent denim jackets. These jackets, in addition to being water repellent, feature inside pockets to carry day to day essentials like a cell phone, keys and lipstick. The water and stain resistant feature adds to the jacket’s durability. Fewer stains mean fewer washes which saves on water waste.
The jackets are made with Italian premium denim finished with a unique blend of Bluesign© approved technology and produced in Los Angeles. The women's jacket has an oversized fit and is dropped shouldered and cropped, while the men's trucker style features a longer silhouette.
The brand also launched a core knit program of everyday tees and sweatshirts in solid colors and further plans to venture into accessories and footwear.
Moral Fiber wants to revolutionize fashion by recycling polyester to create a sustainable fiber that can be reused eternally. The company has developed a three-step chemical process that can extract polyester from mixed blend materials to create a new yarn, billed as the world’s first textile product made entirely from old clothing. The equipment needed for this transformation can fit into a small shipping container, making it easy to deploy.
The process involves taking a mixed material, which has some cotton and polyester, and extracting the polyester at the molecular level to produce a new yarn. The leftover material is incinerated to power the pilot plant but the final box could also be powered by solar panels placed on the roof. The process requires around 50 amps of power at peak consumption.
The technology can extract polyester from any blended material and will be suitable for recycling other plastics. As of now it starts with fabric but it can process packaging, bottles, containers, films, multilayer packaging. The company sees this box as the box that is tailor-made for textiles but in the future wants to make a box for packaging, a box for carpets and for all sorts of different materials.
Spinexpo will be held in France from January 16 to 17, 2019. This is a trade fair dedicated to promoting innovation in the yarn, fiber and knitwear industry. It will present a preview of its collections and color ranges for the spring/summer 2020 season.
Spinexpo is the go-to venue for all fiber and textile yarn users and buyers of flat knit garments. The event brings together a selection of the industry’s key textile groups and is aimed at knitters, weavers, lingerie manufacturers and ready-to-wear brands and fashion houses with their own knitwear departments.
The fair will highlight sustainable developments. Shilead, a spinner, has made major investments that have helped to considerably reduce the contamination of the company’s dyeing process. Shilead reuses 60 per cent of the volume of its waste water. With organic cotton, recycled fibers and cationic modifications, recycled yarns have an important place in Shilead’s collections and are used to create innovative and varied fantasy yarns. And it has taken things a step further with the arrival of a recycled nylon thread that gives these products a much more modern twist.
Shilead is introducing Sorona and graphene fibers, which give the yarns a functionality while protecting the environment. Sorona is a corn-derived fiber that provides an alternative to oil, while at the same time protecting the textile’s appearance. Graphene provides heat insulation against infrared rays and has multiple properties: it is antibacterial, anti-ultraviolet and antistatic.
Many articles of clothing that can be categorized as fast fashion are, in fact, longer lasting than their more expensive counterparts. So to blame the fast fashion industry for rampant waste is a bit unfair. A number of fast fashion products demonstrate significantly better value for money than other brands - especially when compared to designer brands.
So the inescapable conclusion is: people throw away clothes because they grow tired of them, not because they’re worn out. In fact, hardly anyone wears clothes to the point of wearing them out. Much of the clothing thrown away has nothing wrong with it. It has no holes in it; it's still functional. So the problem lies more with wearers than it does with the clothing producers themselves.
To automatically equate a price tag with quality is a mistake. Some of the longest-lasting clothes come from fast fashion retailers. While cheap fashion or fast fashion does raise legitimate questions about labor standards, expensive brands are notorious for unethical practices, too. It's a safe assumption that the people being paid to make those clothes are getting very little and likely working in hazardous conditions.
Burberry burnt unsold merchandise last year. Products of higher-end brands were made alongside cheaper ones in the Rana Plaza factory that collapsed in Bangladesh.
The unstable China-US relationship suppressed market confidence for cotton yarn in December. For Vietnamese cotton yarn, orders were at a large amount (China’s orders are centered on Vietnamese cotton yarn) and ordering price was volatile. In December, Vietnamese cotton yarn mills are heavily burdened. Some made efforts to develop other markets and succeeded. Thus exports to China may fall. If Chinese buyers keep ordering negatively, the price of forward Vietnamese cotton yarn may further drop.
For Indian cotton yarn, the forward price fluctuated in a narrow range and the transactions were scarce. Indian exporters did not find great opportunities to export. Indian cotton prices remained weak. Cotton yarn consumption has improved, pushing up cotton yarn prices, so exporters do not have room to operate. In the short run, forward Indian cotton yarn prices will be well supported.
For Pakistani cotton yarn, forward prices in December tended from stable to weak. Calculated on the basis of export price to China, Pakistan cotton yarn mills suffered significant losses, but with an increase in cotton yarn consumption in Pakistan’s local market, mills can maintain production. In addition, the Pakistani rupee sustained depreciation, providing downward room for the export price of Pakistan cotton yarn. Due to limited stocks in China ports, regional transactions continued and traders ordered cautiously amid a bearish market concerning about the further decline of forward cotton yarn prices.
Florian Heubrandner is the new Vice President, Global Business Management Textiles at Lenzing. He replaces Amit Gautam who will start a new venture and work closely with Lenzing in the textile value chain. Heubrandner will be leading Lenzing’s global strategy and development across the textile value chain, bringing to life Lenzing’s transformation from a B2B fiber producer to a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) brand following the rejuvenation of Tencel earlier this year and the launch of Ecovero, Lenzing’s sustainable viscose brand, last year.
Over the past few years, he has played an integral role in Lenzing’s global leadership team. Tencel is Lenzing’s textile specialty brand. Drawing on the synergies of the R&D center in Austria and the Application Innovation Center in Hong Kong, Lenzing will continue to empower the industry value chain with high quality fibers and value-added fiber and fabric innovation.
One of these initiatives is the expansion of production capacity for Tencel Luxe branded cellulosic filament. A renewed focus on branding to drive stronger demand for Tencel and Ecovero branded fibers in the industry value chain is expected to foster increased awareness of Lenzing’s brands among consumers and therefore generating demand for its fibers in the value chain.
Lenzing has been on a fast track to a B2B2C brand transformation while garnering steady growth via collaborations with consumer brands and participation in various fashion shows around the world.
Exports of Egyptian cotton grew 181.6 per cent from December to February this year. However, deceptive practices by some manufacturers have damaged the reputation of Egyptian cotton. The plan is to reinforce the credentials of genuine Egyptian cotton as an ethical and sustainable brand, the cultivation and production of which supports whole communities.
The integrity of supply chain will be policed to ensure full compliance, traceability and transparency. Egyptian cotton is still widely recognised as a luxury brand. Americans associate Egyptian cotton with quality and are prepared to pay a premium for it, ahead of Pima cotton, Turkish cotton and Supima.
In the past two years, Egypt has taken measures to restore seed purity and cotton quality. Egyptian cotton’s length, strength, firmness, color, trash count and maturity have all improved. If Egypt’s cotton industry returns to its previous glory, the economy would flourish, spinning and textile industries would boom, and stalled factories would reopen.
Egypt is keen on upgrading the system of cotton cultivation. A classification map for Egyptian cotton has been prepared and distributed in the governorates, showing the cultivated varieties in each governorate, their productivity, and a map of the cultivars and the approved varieties for each fork.
Denim is getting colorful. Intense color has become a key ingredient in many influential trends, including maximalism, the ’80s reboot and fashion’s role in activism. All three trends rely on bold color to make a statement, forcing designers to reconsider their traditional light and pastel spring/summer color palettes.
The colors to watch out for in 2019 are: orange and neon yellow which inject a zesty youthfulness in Cristiano Burani’s and Bode’s collections. The citrus hues speak of the season’s laid back surfer cool denim—a look that MSGM summed up in its street wear homage to retro, seaside fashion. And when one color isn’t enough, there’s always tie-dye. Pink and bright red maintain momentum, cropping up in Alberta Ferretti’s and Off-White’s spring collections.
While Pantone’s color, Living Coral, offers an animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge, the spring ’19 runway glowed with colors that already have a positive track record at retail. The millennial-driven color wave washed over women’s and men’s apparel and accessories in 2018.
Gap is closing hundreds of its stores. These are stores that don’t fit Gap’s expectations, whether in terms of profitability, customer experience or traffic trends. Instead focusing on higher-performing shops, Gap hopes to save some $100 million and strengthen healthier stores.
Gap offers apparel, accessories, and personal care products for men, women, and children under the Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Intermix brands. Its products include denim, tees, button-downs, khakis, and other products; and fitness and lifestyle products for use in yoga, training, sports, travel and everyday activities.
The operating model improvement process at the company’s namesake brand has been fraught with inventory problems. As a result, the company was saddled with excess inventory coming into the first quarter, which consequently impacted the company’s sales from this brand as well as its ability to optimize its margins, since it forced the brand to be more promotional.
The company has one platform for all of brands ensuring customers can purchase items for any of them in one place. This has also ensured its new brands get the recognition that would not have been possible if they had had a separate web presence. An upshot of this is that the company was able to deliver strong growth from its online and mobile channels in the second quarter.
Pakistan hopes to benefit from the US-China trade war. If businessmen from China bring fabrics to Pakistan for making finished products, and export those to the US, then they will not only able to maintain their client base but Pakistan will also benefit. Turning fabrics into finished products needs resources like manpower, machinery and factory premises. And Pakistan have all these.
Enabling Chinese textile exports this way will give a boost to Pakistan’s exports and deal with the balance of payments situation. When Chinese businessmen carry out their exports jointly with Pakistan, making use of the raw materials as well as Pakistan’s human resources, it will add to the earnings of Pakistan.
Pakistan is the fourth largest producer of cotton across the globe. Textile products have a 60 per cent share in Pakistan’s exports. The textile industry contributes almost a fourth to industrial value addition and employs 40 per cent of the country’s industrial labor force.
Also China is helping Pakistan's spinning mills become more cost efficient and competitive. Almost 80 per cent of the yarn and other textile products will be re-exported to China for value addition to sell the finished goods at better prices in the international market.
