Innovative materials take centre stage in European competition
This year’s theme is ‘Reimagine Fashion: Changing behaviours for sustainable fashion’ and 30 projects from 14 countries were selected from a field of 766 applications.
The semi-finalists are all early stage social innovation projects that are working towards changing the ways people produce, buy, use and recycle fashion.
In the next stage of the competition they will receive support to further develop their ideas, before the judges meet again later this year to determine the finalists and winners.
Slawomir Tokarski, director of Innovation and Advanced Manufacturing at DG GROW, said: "Building on Europe's position at the forefront of global fashion, this year's European Social Innovation Competition set out to look for innovations that encourage more sustainability across the fashion industry. More than 760 applicants from across Europe and the Horizon 2020 associated countries answered our call and we're really impressed with the variety of creative ideas they've come up with to help reimagine fashion for the better."
They are:
• ALMA (Italy): A material innovation start-up, focused on finding sustainable components to create a leather alternative, for instance, apple waste.
• BYBROWN's Transposable Circular Raincoat (Netherlands): A 100% recyclable, circular and durable raincoat that is to be distributed through a new consumption model.
• ChoozFit (Romania): A proprietary outfit recommendation engine for digital fashion brands that helps consumers make more sustainable choices.
• Cultural Sustainability in Fashion (Romania): Artisan-designer collaborations focused on reviving heritage European textile crafts.
• Dyeluxe (Germany): A method to transform natural colour pigments, derived from food by-products, into textile dyes.
• Edith (Italy): An app that offers personalised style tips and helps users to organise their wardrobes.
• Fairbrics (France): A technology that converts the CO2 emitted during fabric manufacturing into new synthetic fabrics.
• Fluid Fashion Realities (Spain): A system that allows users to match physical garments with digital projections of looks in real time.
• Hempcell (Germany): A start-up that is promoting premium European Hemp Lyocell fibres as a viable and sustainable textile alternative.
• Kleiderly (Germany): A start-up that turns recycled clothes into durable material used to make a range of products, from furniture to suitcases.
• Love Your Denim (Italy): A means to collect unwanted jeans and then turn them into a yarn from which cotton sweaters and jackets are produced.
• MeuTeu Co-design Lab (Spain): A sustainable fashion lab that uses co-design with consumers as an inclusive approach to create products that they really need.
