The future is here: Today, fashion company BESTSELLER announces a new collaboration facilitated by its ‘Fashion FWD Lab’. This time with Swedish innovator Renewcell, which is pioneering a sustainable and circular recycling method. Three BESTSELLER brands – VERO MODA, OBJECT and SELECTED – are some of the first fashion brands to produce garments at market scale from Circulose® recycled material.
“This is innovation at market scale. It’s an extremely important milestone for BESTSELLER and our Fashion FWD Lab that we now have a sustainable recycling method to produce commercial fashionable garments for our stores. Even more incredible, Circulose® is a low-impact circular material of an excellent quality and it supports our sustainability strategy Fashion FWD 100 percent,” says Camilla Skjønning Jørgensen, Sustainable Materials and Innovation Manager in BESTSELLER.
Recycling clothes finally works
Renewcell’s Circular Business Manager Jenny Fredricsdotter agrees that this is an important collaboration as it demonstrates the commercial capability of Circulose® and that recycling clothes finally works.
“We rely on global brands like BESTSELLER to help us close the loop on fashion globally by spreading awareness to their customers and using their influence to shift the supply chain to circularity,” says Jenny and continues:
“At Renewcell, we want to change the whole fashion industry. An ambitious and complex mission but necessary as the environmental impact from fashion is only growing. BESTSELLER has realised this and is now incorporating that insight into their fundamental values. They are taking action with their Fashion FWD strategy with aggressive goals and responsible actions. We are proud to contribute to BESTSELLER’s ambitious work to become a more sustainable brand.”
Exclusive collections ready for Spring 2021
Recently, BESTSELLER launched its new innovation lab ‘Fashion FWD Lab’, which focuses on new low-impact circular materials and production technologies, as well as circular business models. As BESTSELLER’s experimental sustainability hub, Fashion FWD Lab acts – most of all – as a catalyst for collaborations consisting of pilot projects, workshops, case studies and more to accelerate sustainable change.
For this collaboration, BESTSELLER brands VERO MODA, OBJECT and SELECTED have been onboard early in the process to explore and test the capabilities of Circulose®, and they have all approved the fabric’s quality.
“These materials are in exceptionally high demand, which is why we’re very pleased that we were able to secure fibres from the second batch of Circulose® ever produced. And due to the high support and professional effort from our brands included in this process, we have been able to reach an end-product of excellent quality,” Camilla says.
The Circulose® fibres have been spun into yarns and the fabric has just been finished, ready for production. An exclusive and limited edition of styles will be available in handpicked stores worldwide in Spring 2021.