“Be like a flower, survive the rain and use it to grow”.
Every summer season is a real challenge for knitwear.
We often choose not to choose and we end up in the safe and reassuring path of things already experienced.
In this new summer season we are forced to change and we don’t have to be afraid as change leads to progress. There would be no evolution without progress. So, in this first seasonal Newsletter we change too, and we start by saying which yarns are considered as banned and which knitwear stitches have to go with them.
The driving force in style change has surely been the spinning industry, which, after many years of small attempts of new lines and products have bravely set aside yarns, beautiful in some cases but with a strong environmental impact, therefore no longer sustainable.
Yarns made by cotton and covered by polluting polyamide have disappeared. 100% traditional polyamide yarns have disappeared.
We witnessed the reduction of recycled cotton, visually very interesting, but still very fragile in terms of quality, risking being underperforming in terms of pilling and twisting and risking compromising our glorious Italian tradition of quality yarns.
We decide to leave recycled fibers to those who play their cards only in terms of price and not quality, at least until we will not be able to change the production technology and make it more stable.
For spring we have decided to come alive again, to consciously renounce some choices that we usually had taken for granted, through a meticulous and sustainable raw materials selection.
Cotton, linen, bamboo and eucalyptus are the driving trends of this season.
However, we abandon traditional in favour of organic cotton; the spinning industry made a huge effort to update and redefine all the fiber supplying process in order to choose noble and ethical production chains.
The return to old fibers is the answer to our need of rediscovering our values through our origins.
We therefore focus on organic yarns, from non-GMO seeds, eco-sustainable plants grown without pesticides or excessive water consumption.
We restart respecting faraway lands in India and Turkey as we finally realized how the world is a small shared vegetable garden to be cultivated with love.
However, these old yarns have to be used with innovative machines in order to offer a new product image.
We have decided to change, to leave behind the traditional jersey stitch which usually dominates summer collections. We shy away from basic styles that have been part of our tradition and leave ample space for closed and double mesh stitches.
Double ribs, wavy ribs, restrained ribs, everything but jersey stitches. The choice of these stitches is not a sign of madness but of wisdom, too often summer knitwear collections overlap the offer of t-shirts and jerseys. We need to innovate in order to change.
Jacquard stitches, multi-gage intarsias, non solid colours, which develop in a pursuit of natural drawings with the alternation of shiny and opaque, and the alternation of smooth and rustic yarns.
The 18 gage knitted in a wavy way, and the 5 gage knitted in ribs and in wavy cable knit and links.
These new stitches are the synthesis of the marke need for renovation. And also the essence of the specific requests of yarn trends.
The recycled yarn is fragile and short by nature, therefore it strategically confirms the need to dignify it through stitching and closed pin processing, in order to avoid premature ageing of the after-sales product and a quick estrangement of the final consumer, not only referred to the product itself but also to the concept of organic, ethical and sustainable.
In order to reinforce the more creative parts of the collection, patterned yarns come into play, and we will talk about them in our next Newsletter. Borders have been overcome and if on the one hand there is a return to ancient yarns, on the other new horizons have opened up for synthetic and artificial yarns.
Last stylistic reflection, the biggest fear is that the world is not ready to bear the cost of this change. How to deal with it so that the market undestands and adheres to it? Through communication, change in fashion can not take place only from the vertice, but must be shared with the base, through involvement, awareness and a clear differentiation of style between traditional imported products and the most interesting patterned products.
Concept by Italian Style Lab