The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
LONDON, United Kingdom — Pineapples aren't just good to eat. A Spanish businesswoman is on a mission to convince us they're also good to wear.
Carmen Hijosa has created Piñatex, a textile woven from the long fibres in the fruit's discarded leaves that she hopes will give the fashion industry a sustainable alternative to leather.
A clothes designer by trade and having abandoned leather on environmental grounds, she spent eight years developing her alternative textile.
"Because of their characteristics — they're very fine and strong and flexible — my idea was what if I make a mesh with these fibres, not unlike what leather is," Hijosa told Reuters.
ADVERTISEMENT
"And that was the beginning of this new material."
Hijosa, who founded the company Ananas Anam to market Piñatex, works with pineapple farmers in the Philippines who harvest and strip the fibres, which are finished into Piñatex in Spain.
To make one square meter of Piñatex takes 460 leaves — but there's no shortage of raw material. Global pineapple production topped 25 million tonnes in 2016, according to statistics portal Statistica.
Ananas Anam says the waste from the top 10 producer countries could theoretically replace over 50 percent of global leather output.
Since its commercial launch in 2015, Piñatex has been used by about 500 manufacturers, including vegan sneakers sold by fashion house Hugo Boss.
All of smaller-scale brand Altiir's biker-style jackets are made from it.
"People come in, they'll touch it, they're attracted to it. At first, most of the time, they think it's leather and then they feel it and it doesn't feel like leather," said its creative director Timothy Turner-Sutton.
"It's its own material. When it gets wet it dries like leather and it behaves like leather in every way except it's completely sustainable."
ADVERTISEMENT
Aside from the resources needed to raise cattle to slaughter, critics of the leather industry point to its use of chemicals with tannery waste containing large amounts of pollutants.
High-profile opponents to the use of animal products include British designer Stella McCartney, who has said the fashion industry needs to radically cut the damage it is doing to the environment.
However, at least for now, going vegan doesn't come cheap. Altiir's jackets retail for a cool £680 ($860).
By Matthew Stock; editor: John Stonestreet.
The industry needs to ditch its reliance on fossil-fuel-based materials like polyester in order to meet climate targets, according to a new report from Textile Exchange.
Cotton linked to environmental and human rights abuses in Brazil is leaking into the supply chains of major fashion brands, a new investigation has found, prompting Zara-owner Inditex to send a scathing rebuke to the industry’s biggest sustainable cotton certifier.
Over the last few years, the run-up to Earth Day has become a marketing frenzy. But a crackdown on greenwashing may be changing the way brands approach their communications strategies.
This week, Sephora announced plans to double down on ‘green’ and ‘clean’ product labels, leaning into an increasingly risky marketing tactic even as a greenwashing crackdown has prompted other brands to pull back.