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 FounderNimco 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 & FounderJun Kamei talks about ideas and how he sees things shaping up in the near future.
There is an urgent imperative to shift towards a circular economy in which waste and pollution are removed from the system, more so after the pandemic. Here are four examples of clothing businesses that made use of the lockdown to put this ideal into practice.
Throughout his career, Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, who has died of cancer at 84, rejected terms like “fashion”. But his work allowed much of the world to reimagine itself through clothing.
BD Nathani, who always dreamt of travelling the world began by selling a cough syrup, and ironically was felled by the dastardly COVID-19. He had recapitualted his journey in his debut book My Journey Through Lala Land. A texfash.com tribute through extracts from Chapter 7 of the book.
The mission of the Sustainable Leather Foundation (SLF) is to support the global leather industry to learn, to improve and to protect the planet for future generations. Towards this objective its latest offering is the Partner Profiles and QR Codes which link up the SLF and a company’s website, and the company’s Transparency Dashboard. In a brief conversation with texfash.com, Deborah Taylor, Managing Director at SLF elaborates on the initiatives.
Vegan, completely biodegradable and produced with bio-fabrication, AMSilk’s products are environment friendly and make a significant contribution to a future zero-waste society. Ulrich Scherbel, Managing Director at AMSilk, the world’s leading supplier of innovative high-performance biotech materials, talks to texfash.com about how he aims to make smart performing biotech materials part of everyday life.
An entrepreneur-driven industry, the apparel kidswear sector in India is forecast to grow at 14.5% CAGR during 2021–26. And making a play for it is a 100% boot-strapped mobile app-based B2B aggregator platform—KidCity—as it onboards retailers, manufacturers and some other critical cogs in this ecosystem. Could it emerge as a catalyst to change the status quo of the last five decades or more? Tech-enabled, will it work like a magic wand to resolve the inherent structural problems? texfash.com explores.
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.