Fabrics for the future
Listen now
Description
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.)
More Episodes
Published 11/18/24
Everyone wants to feel confident in the workplace. But knowing what to do to perform at your best isn’t always easy. Datshiane Navanayagam is joined by two entrepreneurs and career coaches to explore strategies to help women thrive in their jobs. Jo Wimble Groves is an award-winning British...
Published 11/11/24
Datshiane Navanayagam talks to translators from Turkey and Argentina about giving a writer's work a new life in another language, and whether the age of digital translation is putting the craft in jeopardy. Ekin Oklap is Turkish and grew up in Italy. She's the English language translator for...
Published 11/06/24