H&M’s new Conscious Exclusive collection creates beauty from waste
Zinnia Kumar in H&M | Image credit: H&M
The H&M Conscious Exclusive
A/W20
collection features a range of dramatic pieces crafted from sustainably sourced
materials made from waste.
The collection was shaped by innovative fabrics and processes — including food
crop waste transformed into a natural fiber, creating fabrics made from
sustainably sourced wood pulp and using a unique garment-to- garment process.
H&M says the Conscious Exclusive collection brings the company one step closer
to meeting its goal is to become fully circular, by allowing its design team to
explore new materials innovations and technology that may ultimately shape the
brand’s larger product offer.
This collection introduces four new materials/initiatives that are new to H&M:
Hemp Biofibre™ from Agraloop™ — a 2018 Global Change
Award
winner and graduate of the Plug and Play — Fashion for
Good accelerator
— which transforms waste from fibrous food-crop production into textile fibers;
Eastman’s Naia™ Renew — a fabric made from 60 percent wood pulp and 40
percent recycled waste plastics; sustainably dyed polyester yarns and fabrics
from We aRe SpinDye®; and sunglasses made with Made of Air® — a
carbon-negative thermoplastic made from wood waste; as well as other previously
used sustainable materials such as
VEGEA — which turns
waste from the winemaking process into a plant-based leather.
the exciting potential of cultivated, fermented and plant-based protein innovation
Join us as Aleph Farms, the Better Meat Co, the Good Food Institute and Plantible Foods discuss the latest advancements in cultivated, plant-based, and fermentation-derived proteins — and how incorporating alternative proteins can help brands significantly reduce environmental impacts, while conserving natural resources — Tuesday, Oct. 15 at SB'24 San Diego.
Two H&M stores in Stockholm and Berlin will be offering a rental service
of six pieces from the A/W20 collection — some that are unique to only the
rental service, while others are made in exclusive colorways.
“I’m thrilled to be a part of this Conscious Exclusive campaign, especially as
H&M is paving the way for sustainable collections to become the industry norm,”
says model Zinnia Kumar, the face of the campaign. “As consumers, we will no
longer need to differentiate between fashionability and sustainability, as they
will become one and the same. As an ecologist working in fashion, this fills me
with hope.”
The Conscious Exclusive A/W20 collection will be available at hm.com beginning
December 3.
Houdini open-sources circular jacket to help foster industry circularity
Image credit: Houdini
Meanwhile, earlier this fall, Swedish outdoor clothing brand
Houdini — in collaboration with
Polartec, supplier of recycled-plastic
fleece
and other fabrics to a host of major apparel brands — made its
award-winning "Mono Air Houdi" jacket open-source — available for anyone in the
industry, basement designers or billion-dollar brands, to copy.
For the past decade, Houdini has been a sustainability pioneer within the
apparel industry, challenging the way outdoor apparel is designed, produced and
used — in 2018, the company released the textile sector’s first-ever Planetary
Boundaries
Assessment report,
to understand the impact of its operations. The brand is leading the charge once
again with the launch of Project Mono Air — a unique, open-source initiative
where the work behind their latest innovation, the Mono Air fleece jacket, is
shared online. On the Project Mono Air
website, anyone can
download a complete break-down of the garment's components, down to the last
button. One can also follow every design decision, learn about the fabric
technology, and explore the circular design principles that lay the foundation
for all Houdini garments.
Houdini’s goal is to help the apparel industry become circular and waste-free —
an ambitious vision that will require considerable collaboration.
”The apparel industry is advancing when it comes to sustainable solutions, which
is great. But we need to speed up the pace,” says Houdini CEO Eva Karlsson.
“The insight that sparked the idea of Project Mono Air was that, if we want to
really change the industry for the better, we can’t keep our innovations and
discoveries to ourselves. If we all share the problem, why not also share the
solutions? One garment is not going to solve the problem, but we hope it can be
one step on the way. Hopefully, we can make this initiative echo even beyond the
textile industry.”
The Mono Air Houdi, which was first revealed in January and awarded gold at the
prestigious ISPO
Awards,
was created by Houdini and Polartec to address the issue of plastic and textile
waste on a larger scale. The garment is completely circular, made from mono
materials and engineered to reduce microfiber shedding by 80 percent — which
means a significantly reduced risk of microplastic waste ending up in the ocean.
By making the innovation open-source, the hope is that other brands will embrace
and implement a circular approach to design.
The biggest challenge for brands working with circularity is to design products
that are sustainable without compromising on durability and performance —
Houdini says it has solved for this with the Mono Air. The company says the goal
with the open-source design is not for other companies to create identical
copies of the garment, but to let the work behind it become useful in the
development of new products.
Project Mono Air is part of a growing trend across industries in which leading
companies are sharing their innovations widely, with the goal of speeding
adoption of more sustainable materials and processes — examples include
Kering’s environmental profit & loss
methodology,
Closed Loop Partners’ NextGen Cup
Challenge,
Levi Strauss’ Water<Less
techniques;
and Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health’s compostable, 100 percent
plant-based cleansing cloth
fabric.
Houdini’s open-source files and more information about the project can be found
at the Project Mono Air
website.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Nov 20, 2020 1pm EST / 10am PST / 6pm GMT / 7pm CET