Can Performance and Sustainability Coexist in Apparel?
Performance hasn’t gone hand in hand with sustainability so far, but some brands in the space are hoping to change that. However, in an industry that’s among the most fragmented, where one link in the supply chain often doesn’t know what the other’s doing, the effort to collectively embrace less harmful processes for creating performance apparel could prove quite challenging.
The problem is that not enough stakeholders are rallying around the cause.
“The critical mass is not there,” Invista’s Dieter Backhaus said on a panel at the Dornbirn Man-Made Fibers Congress in Austria Thursday. “We need volumes to have a real impact.”
Reaching greater volumes of more sustainable performance wear means more consumers will have to demand it, more brands will have to want it and more mills and manufacturers will have to be on board to supply it.
That collective effort will have to start somewhere, and Lenzing’s Robert van de Kerkhof thinks it begins with design.
“We need to really simplify garment design I think as an industry. We can only contribute a little bit,” van de Kerkhof said, adding honestly that cellulose fibers can’t singlehandedly save the sector, nor can they accomplish all the performance needs of today’s apparel. “The only way we can do it is to…
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