texfash

It was in 1997 that a young girl in war-ravaged Somalia began to train women and girls in income-generating tye-and-dye programmes. By 2012 Qaal Designs was started in Los Angeles with the sole idea of reuse, recycle and repurpose products using digitisation. This ‘global movement’ in sustainable fashion is now moving from LA to the streets of Nairobi, Mogadishu, Arusha, Kigali and expanding to the rest of Africa. texfash.com in conversation with Founder Nimco Adam.

Stephen Mayfield is a distinguished professor of Biology at UC San Diego. Tom Cooke came with decades of experience in product development. Together, they created at Bluewear Footwear the world's first biodegradable pair of shoes made from plant-based fabrics and oils that decompose fully. A riveting interview with texfash.com.

The Amphitex project of Amphibio is the first 100% recyclable chemical-free waterproof breathable textile made for the outdoor and sportswear apparel industry. In April this year, Amphitex by  Amphibio was announced as one of four Terra Carta Design Lab winners. CEO & Founder Jun Kamei talks about ideas and how he sees things shaping up in the near future.

From pre-pandemic exports a little under 2% of its total revenues to gunning for a 15-20% growth this fiscal, the Ahmedabad-based Chiripal Group, is on an expansion drive as it looks to augment its overall denim capacity to 240 MMPA.

Zipper major YKK is conducting lifecycle assessment of all its products to help guide development of sustainable trims, even as the fashion element is changing for this fashion accessory with consumer-led demands.

The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel's (HKRITA) novel Garment-to-Garment (G2G) Recycle System shows that integral and closed-loop garment recycling can indeed be done, and sans any water and chemicals, but no big-time manufacturer or brand has been able to use this innovation at the industrial or mass scale. A texfash.com Special.

The Treadler project of the H&M Group, hailed as a fashion gamechanger, is being shelved for not growing fast enough. Ironically, the Treadler project served as a 'case study' on the Higg Inc website for making a difference. And, Higg has been time and again accused of furthering the interests of companies like H&M.

In a big blow for the Higg MSI tool, Norway has ruled that the former is not sufficient as a basis for the environmental claims that fast fashion retailer H&M and outdoor brand Norrona have used in marketing themselves and their products, and asked the two entities to change or remove the relevant marketing using the Higg MSI from their product pages within the stipulated time.

The Big Daddies in the textiles-apparel-footwear-fashion ecosystem are the hands behind some of the most followed sustainability benchmarks. The charge is that they have been using the cloak of opaqueness and secrecy and also the lack of credible data to greenwash themselves. texfash.com recaps the brouhaha.

Implementation of extended producer responsibility (EPR) along side supporting measures is widely believed to incentivise eco-design. Texfash.com talks to Toby Connock, Consultant at Eunomia, the agency that was commissioned by the Changing Markets Foundation (CMF) and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) to conduct a study on the role of EPR and supporting policy measures in driving a circular economy for textiles in Europe.