Skip to content Skip to navigation

Ready for sustainable revolution

Fashion FWD Lab

BESTSELLER is introducing 'Fashion FWD Lab' - an experimental sustainability playground, which will identify new and innovative solutions that will help create the future that the fashion industry needs.

Catalyst for collabs

BESTSELLER’s Fashion FWD Lab focuses on new low-impact circular materials, better production, new business models and smarter ways of manufacturing. Most of all, the lab acts as a catalyst for collaborations consisting of pilot projects, workshops, case studies and more in order to accelerate sustainable change.

Several projects are already in place, such as partnerships with biotech company Pond (biobased resins), Beyond Leather (animal-free leather based on fruitwaste) and Infinited Fiber (closed loop solution with new cotton-like fibre made from waste). Furthermore, BESTSELLER’s partnership with the Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) which facilitates a direct-to-farm approach and transparency at farm-level originates from Fashion FWD Lab. Then most recent collaboration is with the Finnish-based highly promising material innovator Spinnova (textile fibres produced from wood without harmful chemicals).

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

Spinnova

Spinnova’s disruptive innovation can turn cellulose into textile fibre without complex, harmful chemical processes. The patented SPINNOVA® fibres include 0% harmful chemicals, 0% waste or side streams, and 0% microplastics, minimal CO2 emissions and water use. SPINNOVA® materials are the most biodegradable and circular in the world, and Spinnova is committed to use only sustainable raw materials, such as FSC or PEFC certified wood or waste.

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

Organic Cotton Accelerator

The Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) is a multi-stakeholder organisation dedicated to bringing integrity, supply security and measurable social and environmental impact to the organic cotton sector. OCA acts as a catalyst for change by convening the sector around a common agenda, creating a secure market for farmers to improve their profitability and prosperity, delivering transparency at the start of the supply chain and bolstering the resilience of the organic cotton sector through investments in seed, research, industry standards and traceability innovations.

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

Infinited Fiber Company

What if you could stop used textiles from ending up in dumpsters and instead capture the value of their precious raw materials? Regenerate them into beautiful, new, cotton-like textile fibers, over and over again. That’s basically what Infinited Fiber Company’s technology does. It can turn any cellulose-rich material – like old clothes, used cardboard, or plant stalks – into a unique, biodegradable and re-recyclable soft fiber with a natural look and feel. A whole range of wardrobe items from t-shirts, to hoodies, to dress shirts to jeans, can be made with the fiber. Its spectacularly high dye uptake means further fashion and environmental upside, and it is fully circular and sustainable.

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

Beyond Leather

Beyond Leather develops and supplies a leather alternative based on the waste in cider production. The material consists of 70 percent apple pulp, and everything that’s left over after pressing apples for juice or cider. The last 30 percent are sustainably sourced ingredients, creating an end-product that is safe and sustainable. Beyond Leather works with the industry to develop a material that goes beyond what’s possible with leather tanning today.

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

Pond

Pond harvests materials from nature’s own supplies and then uses advanced technology to turn these materials into strong and durable bio resins, which can be fully biodegraded and composted. It’s a substitute to conventional plastic solutions and other products traditionally made with a crude-oil based resin, and the bio-resin systems are suitable to bind many types of natural fibers, such as flax, hemp, pineapple, palm leaves, cotton, banana and jute. What makes the Pond resin systems remarkable and differentiates them from other bio-based resins, is the strength properties achieved in the end product.

Fashion FWD Lab collaborations

RENEWCELL

Renewcell has found a way to close the fashion loop by transforming textile waste into Circulose®, which is solely made from discarded textiles using a breakthrough process powered by 100 percent renewable energy. Renewcell has generated a sustainable fashion breakthrough by producing Circulose® garments at industrial scale. At present, thousands of tons of biodegradable Circulose® pulp can be produced per year. It’s a drop in the ocean – the textile industry produces millions of tons of dissolving pulp every year – but it’s a drop that sends ripples that can change the fashion industry.