Paris And A Plastic Bottle

Indigo Abstract Newlife fabric A/W2015 www.deborahcampbellatelier.com

In 1996 I was working in London. My first job in fashion, since graduating from Manchester Metropolitan University. Fresh faced and eager I was super excited to get the chance to go to Premiere Vision in Paris. For those who don’t know about PV (as us insiders call it,) is a trade exhibition showcasing leading fabric mills from Europe under one gigantic roof.

The show is renowned for predicting the coming seasons fabric trends, and at that time Trend guru Li Edelkoort of Trend Union created the must see trend installation and film. Clear conceptual imagery and direction were solid starting points for the season creating a real buzz. It was not unusual to see the likes of Tom Ford and Stella McCartney, plus other famous designers at the show.

Fabric innovation was all around, new technology in fibers seemed at the tipping point of a great new age in textile development. On the Lenzing stand I was wowed by a fibre produced from plastic bottles. I picked up a bottle with a luminous yellow fiber spewing out and asked “would we be wearing this anytime soon?” Lenzing the producers excited to tell me about the development of the technology said yes it was the future. I took the bottle home, placed it centre stage on my windowsill, wowed by the possibility of this new techno textile. 

But someone hit the pause button on new technology and hit play on fast, cheap fashion. Recycled fabrics did not figure in mainstream fashion.

By the end of the nineties fabric mills promoting new textile developments were instead concentrating on keeping up with the demands of increasingly larger volume orders from the big corporates. Li Edelkoort pulled her seasonal films and the fashion industry got really very busy producing high volume fabrics at cheaper and cheaper prices. Fashion is one of the only industries that has year on year seen prices fall, how is that sustainable?  

Twenty years later having been in a vacuum of identikit fashion, the tide is beginning to shift. Innovation is on the agenda, this time with more pressing reasons. Human rights, climate change, landfill, carbon footprint, plastic waste and textile pollution are amongst the drivers for new textile innovation.

And so we have come full circle back to that plastic bottle. Sadly I don’t have the original bottle I brought home from Paris. But I do have fabric made of plastic bottles which I am beyond excited about. Recycled fabric made from plastic bottles has been made possible by technology from a company called Newlife based in Italy.

A piece of trivia from Newlife 'you need thirty, one-and-a-half litre bottles to make one kilo of Newlife yarn TM'

I believe other countries like China and the USA have been manufacturing recycled fabric from plastic bottles for some years, which is interesting, as this fabric may have made its way into the wardrobes of mainstream fashion without the consumer or retailers knowledge. The same way as many Italian mills use recycled wool to produce new wool blended fabrics each season.

So why has it taken Europe 20 years to get to the point of talking about and using technology of recycled fabrics as an alternative to producing fabric from raw material?

In 1996 we were not ready to embrace innovation. The world wanted to go on a journey of waste, overconsumption and a disregard for our planets resources. To a large degree we are still motoring along on that journey.

So why and how is the tide shifting? Is it because we are questioning how our clothes are made and by whom? Are we slowly shifting from seeing our clothes as products that will wear out or go out of fashion each season? And therefore looking for added lifespan in a garment? And perhaps we are questioning mindless consumption?

With the same burst of excitement I felt 20 years ago I’m embracing the recycled fabric technology by introducing it into my SS16 collection for DCA and can’t wait to share the capsule preview collection launching in Oct for autumn/winter 15/16. Becoming part of the circular textile, closed loop system is a vision I am finally realising. More on the closed loop system in our upcoming newsletter at www.deborahcampbellatelier.com

Back in 1996 I could not have foreseen my destiny was sealed when I picked up that plastic bottle.