Specialty Fabrics Review September 2024 - 14

[ BRIEFS ] swatches
Olympic blazers
help environment
T
hose sharp Ralph Lauren blazers that the nearly 600 Team
USA athletes were wearing got a real field test during the
opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games as it poured
while their boat traveled the Seine in late July. But being crafted
of Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) certified wool, facing the
elements is in the material's nature.
The merino sheep providing the wool are part of the Shaniko
Wool from Shaniko Wool Company was used in Team USA's
Olympic blazers by Ralph Lauren, featured in the 2024 Paris
Olympics opening ceremony. Shaniko Wool Company adheres to
the Textile Exchange's Responsible Wool Standard, and its sheep
even graze on national forest lands to help mitigate wildfire
danger. Image: Ralph Lauren/Business Wire
Wool Company of Maupin, Ore. They graze in the Western United
States. The company follows regenerative land practices to preserve
the environment and its biodiversity. In some cases, the company
even leaves the land better than it found it. When grazing in federal
forests, the sheep assist in reducing potential wildfire fuel by eating
scrub and overgrown areas. The wool itself is a carbon sink as well.
The Shaniko Wool Company and its partner ranches also supplied
merino wool to Ralph Lauren for the 2014, 2018 and 2022 Winter
Olympics Team USA uniforms. The historic ranch was established
in 1871 as Imperial Stock Ranch, and part of its mission has been to
scale the supply of traceable certified wool to the U.S. textile market
since the company became RWS certified in 2017.
Other clothing in Ralph Lauren's Team USA collection also had
thoughtful consideration as to where the use of virgin materials could
be decreased, such as in 100% recycled cotton polo shirts that use
Natural Fiber Welding CLARUS®
technology.
Leatherlike material grown with
agricultural fruit waste
I
n May, Polybion™, a Madrid, Spain, biomaterials company, released its Celium™
Swatch Sampler collection in a variety of tones, marbled patterns and embossed
styles to show the leatherlike material's versatility. The cultivated cellulose textile
is fabricated via a process where bacteria feed on agricultural fruit waste and was
among the winners of the Redesign Everything Challenge in May, which was launched
by What Design Can Do and the IKEA Foundation.
The material is produced in the company's 14,000-square-foot solar-powered plant
in Central Mexico that was launched in 2022. It's designed to produce 1.1 million square
feet of material annually.
It can be tanned with chromium-free formulations and has potential uses in fashion,
sportswear and automotive markets. Design and thickness can be tailored to the product.
The company notes on its website that its production is EPA-, REACH- (a European
standard) and ZDHC-compliant and concentrated within a 30-mile radius of the plant. Polybion
says that there is enough fruit waste to produce 160 million square feet of Celium annually.
The company began in 2014, founded by brothers Axel and Alexis Gómez Ortigoza and
their friend Bárbara González Rolón, who has a Ph.D. in materials science. At first, they
started investigating mycelium, which Axel saw the potential of while participating in
a synthetic biology competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Polybion
founded the first vertically integrated mycelium pilot plant in Latin America in 2016 but
moved to bacterial cellulose production in 2019.
14 SPECIALTY FABRICS REVIEW / September 2024
Celium™ is created from a process where
bacteria feed on agricultural fruit waste.
It is produced in a solar-powered plant in
Central Mexico. Images: Polybion

Specialty Fabrics Review September 2024

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