Fabrics for the future

The Conversation

According to the UN, the fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions. That's more than aviation and shipping combined. We talk to two women making climate-friendly clothes and developing innovative textiles in a bid to reduce the waste produced by fast fashion.

Regina Polanco is the founder and CEO of Pyratex, a textile company making fabrics from seaweed, banana and orange peel for some of the biggest brands in fashion. Born in Vienna, she has also lived in Morocco, Mauritania and Switzerland but she returned to Spain, the country where she grew up, to found her company in 2014.

Sasha McKinlay grew up in Singapore and moved to the United States to study architecture. Now a design researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she's developing so-called 'active' textiles. They're essentially textiles with embedded functionality without the need for electronic inputs. These include materials that can be either warm or cool depending on the weather, and garments that can be made in a single size and robotically tailored to fit the wearer or to be customised into new styles.

Produced by Jane Thurlow

(Image: (L) Sasha McKinlay credit Katie Koskey. (R) Regina Polanco credit Pyratex.)