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FASHION

Top French fashion brands start making free face masks

France has long been short on protective face masks, even for the people fighting on the front line of the coronavirus epidemic. Now, some of the country's most prestigious fashion houses are vowing to help.

Top French fashion brands start making free face masks
Photo: AFP

Louis Vuitton is converting five of its French workshops to make masks for frontline health workers, the luxury brand said Wednesday.

Its chairman Michael Burke praised employees who had volunteered to make the non-surgical masks with France hit by shortages of protective facing coverings.

READ ALSO: Mask or no mask – what is the official coronavirus advice in France

He said hundreds of thousands of masks would be produced in the workshops which usually turn out designer clothes and luxury leather goods.

Dior, which is also owned by LVMH, the world's biggest luxury goods group, has been making masks since the end of last month for hospital staff.

It said that seamstresses who usually work on couture creations had volunteered to go back to its ateliers in Redon in Brittany in western France, which has been closed since France when into lockdown on March 17.

“In an exceptional show of solidarity, our wonderful petites mains (or “little hands”, as those who make luxury clothes are called) are working tirelessly” to protect health workers, the label said.

A number of fashion labels have also been making masks for free, with designers also sharing their DIY patterns online.

LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, the world's second richest man after Amazon's Jeff Bezos, last month ordered his perfumeries that usually make fragrances for Dior, Guerlain and Givenchy to switch production to hydroalcoholic gel hand sanitiser.

The gel was then distributed free to French hospitals. LVMH said they would make as much of the gels “as was needed… and honour the commitment as long as necessary.”

READ ALSO These are the French towns set to make masks compulsory

 

 

 

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ENVIRONMENT

French firm pioneers green tech to recycle clothes

A company in south-west France is at the forefront of the challenge to reduce pollution and waste in the fashion industry

French firm pioneers green tech to recycle clothes

The vast waste and pollution caused by the fashion industry has made recycling clothes a top priority, but only now are simple tasks like pulling the sole off a shoe being done by machines.

CETIA, a company in the Hendaye, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, is finally offering some mechanical solutions to the challenges of recycling clothes.

Its research team has developed a machine that uses artificial intelligence to scan garments, identify hard elements like zips and buttons, and use a
laser to cut them out.

It has also built a machine that grabs shoes in a large mechanical arm and yanks off the soles.

In a world of space travel and vaccines, that may seem a relatively rudimentary piece of technology, but it had simply never been done before.

“It was a chicken-and-egg question. No one was recycling soles because we couldn’t separate them from the shoe, and no one was separating them because there was no recycling,” said company director Chloe Salmon Legagneur.

Previously, recyclers had to bake the shoes for many hours to melt the glue and then pull the sole off by hand.

“There’s nothing spectacular in what we’ve done,” Legagneur said. “But we’ve done it.”

Currently, barely one percent of textiles in Europe are turned back into new clothes. Most end up as housing insulation, padding or asphalt for paving roads.

That is because clothes are usually a complex mix of materials that must be separated carefully to keep the fibres in good condition if there is any hope
of respinning them into new garments.

Usually done by hand, CETIA says its AI-laser machine can do this at a much faster rate that is rapidly evolving as it perfects the technology.

It also has machines that can sort clothes by colour and composition at a rate of one per second.

EU rules

The reason these inventions are finally emerging is that tough new European rules are imminent that will force clothing companies to use a set amount of
recycled fibres in their garments.

CETIA’s work is backed by big retailers like Decathlon and Zalando who are urgently looking for industrial-scale solutions.

There are also political incentives. The French government sees the potential for new manufacturing jobs if recycling technology allows it to deal with some of the 200,000 tonnes of textile waste currently being shipped abroad each year.

CETIA’s focus is on preparing textiles for reuse. Other companies must now start melting down separated soles and turning them into new ones.

But it is an important first step.

“As long as we do not have systems to prepare materials for recycling, we will not have a recycling sector in France,” said Veronique Allaire-Spitzer,
of Refashion, which coordinates waste management.

It injected €900,000 into CETIA with a similar contribution from the regional government.

“None of this is a magic idea. It’s just common sense,” said Legagneur. “But it’s about putting together the engineers and the financing and the companies who need these solutions, and it’s only now that these things are coming together. Ten years ago, no one wanted it.”

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