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.
The new leadership and cash infusion are intended to help bring the company’s “biofabrication” technology, which can replace fossil fuel-based textile coatings and enhance the performance of natural materials, to commercial scale for the first time.
Modern Meadow is primarily known for its lab-grown leather, an area of innovation that has attracted mounting interest from fashion brands looking to curb their environmental impact but also struggled to produce commercial-scale technology.
“We’re far enough along in the development of the technology, in the process engineering,” said Bakst. “We’re ready now.” The company said it would announce a coalition of fashion brands and industry partners within the next six to nine months.
While the main focus will be on scaling its coating treatment, some of the company’s funding will also go towards research and development of lab-grown materials and biotechnology.
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Bakst, an industry veteran who chairs Modern Meadow’s board and has held executive roles at Kate Spade, Michael Kors and Donna Karan, succeeds co-founder Andras Forgacs, who has served as the company’s CEO since its inception in 2011. Forgacs will stay on as a board member.
The funding round was led by Key Partners Capital with participation from Astanor Ventures, Horizons Ventures and Cape Capital, bringing Modern Meadow’s total funding to $184 million. (The company declined to disclose its valuation.)
France is pressing ahead with a ‘game-changing’ bill that would impose a ‘sin tax’-style penalty on fast-fashion products as high as €10 per item by 2030.
In the weeks since one of the industry’s most promising recycling start-ups filed for bankruptcy, big brands have put more money and more commitment into bringing innovations to market.
Thirty years of providing the world’s finest wool to the fashion house Loro Piana has done almost nothing for the Indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes.
The fast-fashion giant has joined Vargas and TPG to back a new polyester recycling venture following its failed bet on Renewcell.