Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here.
Next-gen material startups need scale and speed of adoption to succeed. Not finding that with fashion partners, some companies are looking to new partners in the worlds of furniture and automotives to diversify and drive progress.
It’s a path that experts are increasingly recommending to startups, or that startups are recommending to their peers. If successful, it could help an area of innovation that has been teeming with developments but lacking the support necessary to bring those innovations out of the lab — or out of the capsule collection — and into the market. While the pivot could benefit fashion brands, it could also put them at risk if they stay on the sidelines for too long.
Renewcell’s former chief commercial officer Tricia Carey has said that relying too heavily on fashion was one of the fatal mistakes made by the Swedish textile recycling startup — which declared bankruptcy in February, and announced in June that it had a buyer and a new name: Circulose. When the bankruptcy news broke, it also set off alarm bells for others in the industry. Veshin Factory, a manufacturer that specialises in working with alternative leathers, for example, has rapidly expanded the conversations it’s been having to include companies outside of the fashion sector, in everything from pet accessories to restaurants and hotel chains.
The pace is picking up. Leather alternative maker TômTex started out with a focus on fashion and is now expanding into automotive, hospitality and furniture for similar reasons. Other startups have had conversations or partnerships in the works for years. BMW has invested in Natural Fiber Welding, which has partnered with brands including Ralph Lauren and was a recipient of funding provided by a Stella McCartney-backed initiative, and said in 2021 that the startup’s bio-based leather alternative Mirum met its criteria for durability, cost, scalability and environmental impact. Meanwhile, in 2023, Jaguar Land Rover’s investment arm injected funding into biomaterials startup Uncaged Innovations.
Once a sustainable fashion darling, Renewcell’s failure proves systemic change can’t happen without significant industry overhaul.
Last month, Herman Miller, an American furniture brand known for its cult-favourite chair designs, released a lounger made with a plant-based leather alternative from material innovation company Von Holzhausen. Von Holzhausen has had its own fashion accessories and footwear line, but also partners with furniture brands, automotive companies and electronic brands to supply accessories like laptop cases. The multi-channel focus has been deliberate, says founder and CEO Vicki von Holzhausen, because each brings their own benefits and challenges to a partnership.
“We work with many different clients across industries, fashion being one,” says von Holzhausen. “It’s important because fashion is such a great vehicle for storytelling. It’s so important that we get into people’s imagination — that these materials are not just trying to copy the old, but they provide a totally different perspective.”
The furniture and automotive industries have longer development times because the performance standards are so high, but they also work with larger order volumes, she says. Fashion can offer a faster turnaround, but it doesn’t provide the volume of demand, especially at first, that a material production company needs to be able to significantly increase production capacity.
For fashion brands, materials and technologies need a lot of trial and error to be developed, they need investment to be scaled, and the scaling process inevitably requires more trial and error. If startups find other industries to step up and do that work, fashion can get a metaphorical free ride.
However, this diversification should also be a wake-up call. What if those other industries end up focusing a startup’s attention on refining a material for something other than apparel or footwear? If it’s developed for some other purpose entirely, fashion risks losing out, says Valerie Langer, fibre solutions strategist at the non-profit Canopy. At the least, their production capacity could be limited for at least the first year and likely longer.
“If the diversification means [innovators develop] processes that are not suitable for textiles [relevant to fashion], that is a threat,” she says. That’s because next-gen materials are expected to be pivotal in fashion brands’ ability to comply with EU requirements coming down the pike — which could drive a spike in demand, and leave brands unable to meet stricter sourcing standards if supplies of next-gen materials fall short. Given current trajectories, that may well happen, considering it takes at least 18 months to build a commercial production facility once investment is secured, says Langer. “If I were a fashion brand, I would not want the top performers in the innovation field moving too far away from me right now.”
Fashion’s risk aversion
Commercialisation — the stage between development or proof of technology and its widespread availability on the market — is what some call the ‘valley of death’. This is true for many industries, yet insiders say it’s especially true in fashion, where brands are accustomed only to buying finished garments, and not to developing or improving the supply chains needed to produce them.
“It’s a very new thing for fashion to think about venture-backed companies. Computers, IT and software, their lifeblood is venture. Others too: automotive, pharma, a lot of sectors. But for fashion, it’s really a new phenomenon. I don’t think the C-suites are thinking about how to tap into this innovation market,” says Peter Majeranowski, CEO and president of textile recycling startup Circ. It’s equally true for the logistics involved in rolling out new technologies. “Brands are trying to push the supply chain — but the supply chain’s saying, ‘Look, you’ve been pushing us for decades on margin.’ I would say that’s the organic structural challenge in this industry,” he says. “You have brands wanting [the material innovations], but they don’t really understand how it’s going to fully happen.”
He’s by no means giving up on fashion, and Circ already has several partnerships in motion, including with Zara, which released its latest Circ collab just weeks ago. In fact, Majeranowski is increasingly optimistic about fashion, and thinks that between the coming shift in regulations, the lessons that startups and brands alike hopefully learnt from Renewcell, and the advancements of startups like Circ and seemingly countless others, the stars are beginning to align. But he’s also increasingly talking with other sectors as well. Potential partnerships are too early to talk about, but Majeranowski speaks confidently about Circ’s materials showing up in products outside of fashion.
Similarly, Veshin Factory, which specialises in producing plant-based leather goods, has found a number of benefits in talking with companies outside of fashion. There’s a bounty of lower-risk opportunities that companies can engage with Veshin’s production on; drink coasters or pet collars, for example, products where volumes are high but are a relatively minor risk for the buyer and could be a gateway to larger products or purchases. “Fashion is afraid of taking next steps,” says co-founder and co-owner Joey Pringle.
It’s time to start, though. Fashion will miss its climate goals — and will be caught off guard with regulators, as policies particularly in the EU start to come into force — if it doesn’t make major changes. And advocates have long said they want less talk and more action. Now, the startups that can potentially help fashion meet some of its own goals are acting on the same sentiment.
Von Holzhausen, which has deliberately worked with multiple sectors from the start, hopes that diversification can be a win-win for startups and brands alike. Maybe showing a startup’s promise and potential in other sectors — maybe seeing bamboo-based leather on an $8,000 Herman Miller Eames chair — can remove some of the risk lurking in fashion executives’ minds.
“Maybe the fashion industry can use that as a way to realise that iconic things can be made without traditional materials,” says von Holzhausen.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
As growth stalls, luxury has an opportunity for change
Vogue Business’s sustainable summer reading list
California advances bill to hold fashion accountable for its waste
