By Natalia Yáñez Guzmán , Director of Fashion Design and Management UDD.
Industrial designer. Master in Marketing Management and Strategic Planning.
Specialist in "Fashion Textiles Design" and "Interactive teaching for deep learning".
At 35 years old, I remember what my mother said to me in the early 2000s after I proudly and delightedly showed her my first pair of Melissa 's: “how can you spend on plastic shoes, instead of preferring leather shoes instead of the same value” . This comment was so deeply ingrained in my retina that, since then, and every time I start a purchasing process cognitively, I ask myself "why do I prefer this product over the other", and the answer is always complex since it depends on several variables. . However, with absolute certainty, I believe that materiality plays a fundamental role in them.
In the mid-20th century, consumer purchasing decisions were driven by quickly imitable attributes (what capacity does a washing machine have, how legitimate is the leather on a jacket, how many revolutions does the machine spin, etc.). A clear example of that is that industrial espionage arises, in order to replicate technological advances developed by the competition in their own factories, in the shortest possible time and cost.
With the passage of time and changes in sociocultural paradigms, such as the emergence of stricter labor regulations, the socialization of the environmental implications generated by climate change and human action, there was also a change in the motivations for buying a new consumer profile, more critical and reflective regarding what they buy, its origin, what it is made of, how it is produced and who manufactures it. Based on these new requirements and market demands, the industry had to adapt quickly in order to satisfy with complexly imitable attributes, "emotional attributes", and thus establish a permanent link with its target audience.
I resort to the concept "emotional attributes", because they constitute the fundamental reasons that urge the consumer to prefer a brand or product over any other, thus establishing truly competitive advantages, sustainable over time, and building loyalty in a very different way than the other. that they had before with their clients, like for example, the one that my mother could have supported with any brand of footwear, just for the fact that it was made of leather.
The emotional attributes that motivated the purchase of my first Melissa were driven by the considered production process, by the material used and, finally, by its respect for the environment. They considered a serial production made of plastic injected in a single piece. Manufacturing that up to the minute was an innovation, since the "Chinese plastic shoe" was perceived as a product of very poor quality and creditor of a terrible reputation, because even when it was made of the same material, it was assembled by means of the traditional process. of footwear, which practically made it disposable, in addition to maintaining the conventional morphology and design, which caused ventilation problems, producing physical conditions. Its shape was highly attractive and only possible thanks to its manufacturing process. They had a characteristic smell of raspberries, which still exudes in my closet after more than 15 years of use (useful life much longer than any type of footwear of yesteryear), an attribute that is only given by its materiality, a polymer that does not lose its brightness over time, nor its mechanical efficiency, in addition to being able to be recycled, since it is made up of 100% monomaterials.
I resort to this personal anecdote, just to demonstrate the relevance of questioning and reflection in our purchasing decisions, with the purpose of giving opportunity to new initiatives and material innovations that today's contemporary industry offers us, since there are various materials and processes sustainable manufacturing processes that are worth exploring and using.
An example is Blood bio leather , a bioleather manufactured entirely with waste from slaughterhouses and by-products of low economic value that maintain the same characteristics and technical specifications of animal leather, however, they take advantage of the value chain 100%. Another sustainable substitute for leather is Orange fiber , bio textiles made from by-products of citrus juice. The technological innovation that gives rise to its process has been patented since 2014 and is present in the main citrus juice producers in the world.
A sustainable product process that puts an end to the devastating traditional leather tanning, which leads to the loss of more than 400 billion liters of water per year, is what Ecco Leather offers, who have built patented tanning agents that are capable of preserving the natural collagens of the leather, without the use of the usual volume of water, achieving an efficiency of 20 liters of water per hide, which is equivalent to 25 million liters saved per year, in addition to avoiding the generation of 600 tons of sludge with metals heavy that go to the landfill, contaminating the groundwater or directly into the ocean.
There are also sustainable technological advances in inputs and supplies for the fashion industry. Just to name a few, the innovation case of the agency located in London Future Fibers , who created a pigment extract from a bacterium, which became the first DNA-tagged specimen in the pigment collection at Harvard Art Museums' Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies in the United States.
These are just some of the many examples that we can find in today's fashion industry. I invite you to meet them!
Images:
The project questions our relationship with nature. It is made only with biodegradable materials and has been intervened with a light cycle that makes it constantly change. Nothing is what it seems, nothing is permanent, starting with us humans."
Work team: Liliana Ojeda, Clarisa Menteguiaga, Paulina Villalobos.
