Last Saturday (1 April 2023), Il Foglio della Moda (fashion culture insert of the daily newspaper Il Foglio) celebrated its one-year anniversary with a monographic issue. Theme: upcycling. Or, perhaps, something broader. That is: the green value of the durability of a garment, an accessory, a material. A highly topical theme that the insert edited by Fabiana Giacomotti has tackled following, above all, hard lines. The first: giving voice to some leading players in the Italian fashion industry, including UNIC – Italian Tanneries. The second: presenting the results of the research commissioned by the Kearney Consumer Institute. And here, unfortunately, we come to the point: worldwide, half of consumers still do not know what leather is.
Half of consumers don’t know what leather is
It is a cultural issue. This is perfectly illustrated by the research carried out by the KCI “between Italy, France and the United States on a very large base of 2,200 people. Although France and Italy are certainly more advanced than the US in their reuse and re-use practices, they all still lack the kind of garment culture that once guaranteed it a very long life”. A premise that projects the study into an analysis of consumer behaviour towards the current practices available on the market in favour of what is defined as “circularity of purchase”.
And which arrives at a rather dramatic conclusion concerning the industry upstream of the fashion supply chain. “There is a lack of basic culture around raw materials”, writes Giacomotti, “or rather, it has been lost. Almost half of the interviewees declare themselves unable to distinguish between a new yarn or fabric and a recycled/upcycled one. And, of course, to assess its quality. They are the same convinced that cows and calves are killed to make shoes”.
The voice of the players
Yet, as Fulvia Bacchi (general manager of UNIC) tells in her statement in Il Foglio della Moda, “if there is one material that can be cited as an example of circularity in its phenomenal completeness, it is leather”. Why? Simple: “For it being a recovered material,” explains Bacchi, “for the way in which the residues of its production process are regenerated and transformed. And then, for the growing number of manufacturing projects that reuse its excess parts. Once they were special, virtuous projects, but still characterised by an unprecedented creative vision. Today, they have almost become the rule, because upcycling is a green tool with strong communicative connotations”.
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