How To Transform the Textile Industry
HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR COMPANY IN A POSITIVE CHANGE?
The decision to launch Between Conscious Program is driven by the mission to ease a change in the fashion industry.
BETWEEN consultancy supports the process to focus on values and integrating them into the corporate identity, and to find the best professionals with high-level team scouting.
Sometimes all you needed was some inspiration: Between Conscious Program, therefore, started a journey to show you how diverse can be the range of impactful changes that professionals are able to bring in.
Meet the professionals and discover all the possible routes in the journey to sustainability.
Advanced Materials - Jsen Wintle
Jsen Wintle is a creative director and a luxury brand consultant with extensive global experience in creative direction and design. He devoted most of his career to the development of sustainable models of business in the fashion industry, with a keen experience in luxury-end markets.
In the fashion industry since 2002, as a forerunner of circular economy, he kicked off his first sustainable business in 2006. Today he still invests in the future of fashion, with a strong focus on the development of new, advanced materials, and innovative techniques.
Advanced materials go beyond organic
“Innovation is all around the World. We have been studying biosynthetic spider silk made of proteins stored as a water-based solution in a spiders silk gland before being spun into fibre. This process has been reproduced in lab - animals are not involved at all - and the product, this silk, it has all the properties of conventional silk with added steel-like strength and the ability to produce it from simple proteins with a minimal environmental footprint.
In the USA a protein grown leather has been produced in lab, with no animals involved. A material that matches a very fine leather and with the most minimal environmental footprint.
The most promising comes from the CSIRO, an Australian governmental institute we are working with. Through gene technology, cotton grows on the bush coloured, and each bush can grow an array of singular colours. It is even possible to breed pure black cotton.
This is a big deal for sustainability. These innovations can potentially transform the global textile industry, offering a real alternative to synthetic materials”.
Cradle to cradle
“Since when I started my first business in 2002, we tried wherever possible to implement this focus on sustainability. I “formalised “ it with my consulting business Blackpods, but it's always been part of my DNA to push us to adopt the cradle to cradle principles in our operations.
I and the people whom I work with have and continue to undertake huge amounts of research to learn global standards, trends and all we can about sustainability. Taking short courses, attending talks and seminars in all areas.
Of course, we also collaborate and talk with scientists, professionals, government organisations and businesses of many different sizes”.
Evolution takes time
“For sustainability to take over as a system and for advanced material to make it to the market: that is the hard part. It requires a lot of collaboration, passion, and finance.
New materials are expensive for brands to work with. However large brands at this point have to make a commitment to bring them into the marketplace, and some of them actually are.
For example, Stella McCartney and Adidas are partnering to use this laboratory-built leather, grown from mushrooms, which is a very beautiful product.
As we see for most of the trends, they always start in the top-luxury part of the market and work their way down to the mass part. In the not too distant future, we will see a lot of these materials in the marketplace, but it’s an expensive and time-consuming process”.