'10 Things I Hate About You', 1999, Touchstone Pictures.
When it rains, it pours – and Prada is evidently caught up in a storm of conscious production. Just over a month after Prada embraced a ‘fur-free’ policy, ‘Re-Nylon’, an environmental initiative looking to reduce synthetic production, is the order of the day at the Italian fashion house.
Nylon is a type of polymer plastic, a material which is notoriously damaging to the planet. Nylon’s hazardous reputation is due to both the method through which it is extracted from the earth (petroleum) and the fact that it takes roughly 30-40 years to break down. However, nylon does not have to go through the detrimental extraction process every time. Regenerated nylon, called ECONYL, uses old materials such as fish nets, discarded nylon, and carpets to create the glistening fabric.
Prada has built an empire on nylon, it is an emblem of their brand; stretching from the iconic Prada backpacks to the Noughties shoulder bags. It is therefore fitting that they are leading the charge in making the fabric cleaner. The six-piece Re-Nylon collection comes as a move towards achieving the luxury label’s 2021 goal to completely stop using virgin nylon by 2021.
Re-Nylon will see Prada partner with Aquafil, an Italian textile yarn producer, to change the belt bag, the shoulder bag, a tote bag, a duffle, and two Prada backpacks into Re-Nylon by gathering waste plastics and regenerating and purifying these substances, thus ensuring that no extra nylon is unnecessarily created.
Alongside the launch of the ‘Re-Nylon’ collection, Prada has partnered with National Geographic, to create a series of short videos entitled “What We Carry”. The five episodes will elucidate the manufacturing process of the ‘Re- Nylon’ collection, and the process behind creating ECONYL.
Prada’s use of ECONYL follows in the footsteps of fellow sustainable fashion advocate, Stella McCartney, who introduced the product into her designs in 2018. According to Prada, for every 10,000 tons of ECONYL created by Prada, 70,000 barrels of petroleum are saved, reducing Prada’s CO2 emissions by 57,100 tons.
Sustainability is undoubtedly at the forefront of the fashion industry’s conscience after recent statistics revealed that global textile productions emit an eye-watering 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. Couple this with the fact that a reported 73% of millennials are keen to shop for their clothes sustainably, and it becomes glaringly obvious how and why the fashion industry must desperately work to reintroduce sustainability back into their everyday routine.
Despite Prada’s steps to make their lines more ethical and sustainable, critics of the project were quick to observe that the Re-Nylon products will still possess leather detailing, a material that raises hotly debated environmental and ethical questions. Still, Prada’s decision to use less petroleum is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.
Watch the first episode of “What We Carry” below: