"The first pair of yoga pants for women were sold by Lululemon in 1998. A mix of nylon and Lycra, these pants were synthetic elastic fibers that provided the stretch and softness needed to manage all those sweat-inducing contortions during a lengthy session on the mat. Twenty years laters, yoga pants have conquered the closet of even those people who never see the inside of a yoga studio. This evolution began in 2014, when teenagers started wearing leggings instead of jeans. Today, yoga pants form a part of their daily officewear in the US. The popularity of yoga pants has, predictably, led to the evolution of new fabrics. Lululemon Athletica , largely credited with bringing stretchy pants to the masses."

The first pair of yoga pants for women were sold by Lululemon in 1998. A mix of nylon and Lycra, these pants were synthetic elastic fibers that provided the stretch and softness needed to manage all those sweat-inducing contortions during a lengthy session on the mat. Twenty years laters, yoga pants have conquered the closet of even those people who never see the inside of a yoga studio.

This evolution began in 2014, when teenagers started wearing leggings instead of jeans. Today, yoga pants form a part of their daily officewear in the US. The popularity of yoga pants has, predictably, led to the evolution of new fabrics. Lululemon Athletica , largely credited with bringing stretchy pants to the masses, is developing new fabrics to fend off rivals — a pack that now includes the world’s biggest athletics companies.

Evolution of new fabrics

Lululemon’s original fabric, Luon, with a high proportion of nylon microfibre as opposed to a more typical polyester blend, was trademarked in the US in 2005. Many of its newer fabrics are branded and geared toward specific uses. Luxtreme is a moisture-wicking, four-way stretch fabric that’s meant to fit like a second skin. Nulux is a compression fabric meant for sweatier workouts. Silverescent is sold as Lululemon’s “stink-conquering technology,” using silver bonded to the surface of fibers to stop bacteria from reproducing. A T-shirt made from the material costs $68.

Leggings from market competitors use a similar strategy, promoting the versatile pants through branded fabric combinations. For Adidas, pants boast fabrics like its sweat-wicking Climalite material or the thermal-regulating Climacool and Climawarm to accommodate training conditions. Likewise, Nike’s Dri-Fit material keeps sweat at bay and trainers dry. Even Target’s C9-branded fitness collection flexes high-functioning fabrics: Freedom Fabric is a soft blend of polyester and spandex for lifestyle or fitness, while its Embrace Fabric hugs tight to the body for a cozy feel.

Tucked away in the basement of its Vancouver headquarters is a lab called Whitespace, the retailer’s research and development skunkworks. It made yoga pants with repurposed yarn combinations normally used in lingerie.

Brands invest in women’s wear lines

The biggest businesses now in the athletic wear space have invested heavily in growing their women’s wear lines — especially in developing new fabrics and features for the once-simple yoga pant. That same year, Adidas AG began directing its youth brand, Neo, toward younger women. The German sports giant even brought on former Lululemon Chief Executive Officer Christine Day as a strategic adviser.

Adidas quickly became a formidable threat to Lululemon’s dominance. Early steps turned into exclusive designs for women through the PureBoost X line, leading to an even larger emphasis on active tops and bottoms, using technology called Climachill and Techfit, both focused on women’s training. Last year, women’s sales for Adidas grew by 28 percent, making it one of the company’s strongest segments.

Active bottoms and leggings are now a $1 billion industry, according to NPD Group analyst Marshal Cohen. Their appeal to consumers has yielded rapid sales growth that shows no sign of going. Where Lululemon found success with women consumers by providing a niche product that could satisfy casual and active uses, major brands such as Adidas and Nike completed the picture, confirming just how strong the athleisure trend could be.

Intex is on in Sri Lanka, November 14, 15 and 16. This is the largest international textile sourcing show in South Asia. Over 200 suppliers from around 15 countries are participating.

This is a show for yarns, apparel fabrics, denim fabrics, clothing accessories and allied services. It connects the manufacturing and supply chain by bringing together the best manufacturers of apparel and accessories with buyers from South Asia and the rest of the world.

The event is beubg organized by Worldex India Exhibition and Promotion. Event partners include the Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council, Retailers Association of India, Clothing Manufacturers Association of India, Confederation of Indian Textile Industry etc.

Understanding this, Intex strengthens intra-regional trade, helping manufacturers and buyers take advantage of opportunities developing in the South Asia region by combining their strengths and joining hands to create stronger business ties under one trading platform.

Intex’s seminars and interactive business forums deliver high quality market intelligence to support industry efforts to upgrade, move up the value chain, better understand intra-regional trade, leverage better FX practices and help manufacturers gain a competitive edge.

Events such as Intex South Asia go a long way in promoting the existing synergy between India and Sri Lanka.

There are limitations to textile recycling. There is a need to anticipate the possibility of reusing materials from the initial design stage. Mechanical recycling of cotton is now a well-established process, but it degrades the fiber’s quality, so that new clothes can only incorporate 20 per cent of recycled fibers. The industry’s main challenge is that of blended fabrics, very widely used in fast fashion, which make recycling difficult since the various fabric components need to be separated.

Extensive investment is necessary, to develop recycling technologies enabling recycled materials to become as profitable as new ones. A new approach must be adopted right from the beginning of the process. Design choices could greatly reduce the environmental impact of clothes, and improve their circularity. Each garment is likely to generate between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of fabric offcuts.

For example, only 30 per cent of a pair of jeans can be recycled, due to the stitching and rivets. Single material fabrics would make recycling easier. Using sustainable materials right from the start of the process would also go in the same direction. Downstream marketing strategies engage end consumers, allowing them to co-design products that meet their tastes and expectations and increase their loyalty, and actually extend the life cycle of garments.

Kanopy Brands is implementing the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform of BeProduct. The company will use platform for everything, from style creation to sourcing and follow up. The platform has allowed the brand to become faster, more agile and leaner in all operations.

In a short span of time, Kanopy has been able to fully exploit the potential of BeProduct, onboarding all close suppliers, and delivering significant efficiency savings throughout its collaborative design, development and sourcing practices.

Following the successful implementation, BeProduct and Kanopy maintain a close working relationship, with Kanopy influencing the development of BeProduct’s PLM solution, and the BeProduct team providing a support that will allow the retailer’s business to continue to grow in the future.

Craig A. Williams will be the president of Jordan Brand. He was earlier with Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. His experience driving global strategy and growth will help continue to build a premium brand that connects deeply with consumers.

Williams joined Coca-Cola in 2005 and was responsible for leading and growing the company’s business and strategic partnership with McDonald’s in more than 37,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries. Prior to that, Craig held positions of increasing responsibility within TMD, including senior vice president and chief operating officer, vice president US, assistant vice president of US marketing and group director of US marketing.

Larry Miller, current Jordan Brand president, will become chairman for the newly created Jordan Brand Advisory Board. Miller has served as president of Jordan Brand since 2012. He previously held the role from 1999 to 2006. In the interim, he served as president of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. Prior to that, he served as VP, GM, of Nike Basketball.

As president of Jordan Brand, Miller helped build and expand the brand both domestically and around the world. His leadership has driven the Jordan Brand into new areas, including the Jordan women’s line of footwear, partnerships with college football teams, an increasing global presence with Jordan stores around the world.

Aditya Birla Group firm Grasim Industries reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 1,300 crore (approx $180.2 million) for the second quarter ended September 2018 as against net profit of Rs 800 crore it had posted during the July-September period of last fiscal. The company attributed these losses to the merger of Vodafone with Idea Cellular.

Grasim’s revenue increased 24 per cent to Rs 16, 795 crore during the period under review as against Rs 13,570 crore of the corresponding quarter last fiscal. Its revenue from viscose staple fibre (VSF) increased 23 per cent at Rs 2,606 crore for the quarter as against Rs 2,120 crore last fiscal.

The viscose staple fiber (VSF) production and sales volume was 137,000 tonne and 1, 36,000 tonne. As a result of higher production, the share of domestic sales also jumped to 84 percent from 70 percent led by robust demand. The VSF business continues to focus on expanding the market in India by partnering with the textile value chain, achieving better customer connect through brand LIVA and intensive research work in enriching the product mix through a larger share of specialty fiber.

Latest data released by Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau shows, Germany has emerged the top destination of Bangladesh’s apparel exports to the world in October 2018, followed closely by the United States.

Bangladesh earned $2.06 billion from exports to Germany during July-October 2018. This was a 19 per cent gain over the $1.73 billion from the same period last year. Knitwear fetched $ 1.23 billion during this period, a gain of 13 per cent gain. Woven items surged over 29 per cent, fetching over $834 million during this first fiscal quarter.

The US market, which once was top apparel export destination for Bangladesh, saw an impressive gain during the first quarter. The total apparel exports during this period fetched $2 billion, marking a 31 per cent gain over last year’s $1.56 billion.

Better Cotton Initiative has released new leaderboards showing the world’s top users of Better Cotton. The world’s top five users of cotton by volume are H&M, Ikea, Adidas, Gap and Nike. Of these Ikea and Adidas, along with Decathlon, are among brands that sourced 75 per cent of their cotton as Better Cotton in 2017 – the most update production figures available.

The Leaderboards also show that for some retailers and brands, Better Cotton now accounts for a substantial percentage of their total cotton sourcing. Adidas sourced more than 90 per cent of its cotton as Better Cotton in 2017, while Decathlon, Hemtex AB, Ikea and Stadium AB sourced more than 75 per cent of their cotton as Better Cotton.

In 2017, 71 BCI retailer and brand Members of BCI sourced a record 736,000 metric tonnes of Better Cotton. The BCI is aiming towards a 2020 target of having Better Cotton account for 30 per cent of global cotton production. New figures also show that in the 2017-18 cotton season, BCI retailer and brand members contributed more than €6.4m enabling more than one million farmers across China, India, Mozambique, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Senegal to receive support and training.

Meanwhile, among the ‘fastest movers’ of 2017 were Adidas, Asos, Decathlon Gap Inc, G-Star Raw and KappAhl.

A recent hearing of Environmental Audit Committee’s (EAC) hearing on the sustainability of the fashion industry shows, the amount of discarded material had increased sharply in recent years.

As a 2016 survey by Sustainable Clothing Action plan reveals, out of 650,000 tonne of clothing collected for reuse and recycling in 2014, around 39 per cent was donated to charity shops. Eighteen per cent was given through charity bag household collections, 13 per cent brought to textile banks, 7 per cent was sold and 6 per cent of disposed of in general waste collections.

The charity called for greater public education on the environmental impacts of the fashion industry and on ways in which clothes could be repaired, reused or donated. Fast-changing trends and low prices has caused a significant increase in clothing purchases and so the rate of discarding, with 1.13 million tonne of clothing purchased in the UK in 2016, a 200,000 increase in four years.

Seven new companies have joined the ZDHC Roadmap to Zero Program. UK online fashion company, Asos recently joined as a signatory brand. Other new members of the program include Bangladeshi denim business, Denim Expert, Chinese viscose business, Sateri, Indian chemicals business, Meghmani Dyes and Intermediates LLP, Indian apparel business Eastman Exports Global Clothing and Sustainable Textile Solutions (STS).

The program aims to implement sustainable chemistry, drive innovations and best practices in textile, apparel and footwear industries to protect consumers, workers and the environment. The ZDHC is an industry collaboration of brands, value chain partners and associates aimed at driving the textile and apparel industries towards more sustainable chemistry.

Joining the ZDHC, the companies will adopt the ZDHC tools, such as the ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (ZDHC MRSL) and the ZDHC Wastewater Guidelines, and implement them into their value chains. With the additional organisations, the total number of ZDHC Contributors is 116.