New Order of Fashion

SUNBRELLA X WENDY ANDREU

The New Order of Fashion Fellowship initiative creates unique opportunities for the industry to involve bright young fashion design talents in their innovation projects.

Year after year New Order of Fashion scouts the most original and unabashed graduates from the world’s finest Art & Design universities to give them a platform. Our database is full of these ‘diamonds in the rough’, with their fresh and visionary ideas and mind-blowing creativity, ready to be tapped.

For this Fellowship with Sunbrella, New Order of Fashion selected NOoF talent Wendy Andreu.

SOLID SELVEDGES

Solid Selvedges: An innovative approach to sustainability for Sunbrella by Wendy Andreu.

Sunbrella, in collaboration with craft designer Wendy Andreu, presents a unique installation
surrounding sustainability.

This integrative partnership will see Sunbrella’s waste reinterpreted in order to provide a sustainable alternative. By experimenting with combining discarded Sunbrella selvedges with acrylic resin, Wendy Andreu has created a new composite material that is adaptable for functional use, whilst retaining aesthetic value. The exhibition at Dutch Design Week will display a step by step presentation that will allow viewers to understand the process taken to achieve the final product and the opportunities it offers for Sunbrella. From a broader perspective, it will create visibility for the brand’s sustainability mission and inform the audience about the general possibilities for waste.

Regarding Sunbrella’s wider commitment to sustainability as a manufacturer, the brand is continually seeking new methods to solve ecological challenges and is currently running several sustainable initiatives. Interlinked with Wendy Andreu’s design story at Dutch Design Week, there will be a presentation demonstrating the Renaissance Yarn program implemented by Glen Raven and its European factory Dickson Constant. Renaissance Yarns are made up of 50% recycled Sunbrella waste fibres, therefore giving Sunbrella waste a new purpose and simultaneously creating fabric with a unique character.

ABOUT  SUNBRELLA

Since its creation, Sunbrella has been at the cutting edge of innovation. A true international benchmark, the brand has gained recognition from all players in the industry, manufacturers and renowned furniture designers who choose Sunbrella for its diverse range of products and premium quality.

Sunbrella believes fabrics should be beautiful as well as functional, which has helped to establish the brand as the leading manufacturer of “high performance” textiles.

ABOUT  SUNBRELLA’S SUSTAINABI-
LITY PRACTICES

Sunbrella is committed to the environment with comprehensive practices that are rooted in sustainability throughout the manufacturing of the fibre, yarn, and fabric. Through a fabric’s early lifecycle, there is inevitable waste from cutting tables of various customers, as well as excess fibre, yarn, and fabric from the Sunbrella manufacturing facility. Sunbrella took on the challenge of finding this waste a new purpose – and the Renaissance yarn program was born.

Renaissance yarns combine up to 50% of this post-industrial recycled Sunbrella fibre. The waste is segmented into colour groups, reduced back to its fibre state and then mixed with Sunbrella virgin fibre before making its way through the manufacturing process. The virgin fibre blend helps to ensure that the product meets stringent Sunbrella performance standards.

Further to the Renaissance program, Sunbrella also started the ‘Recycle My Sunbrella’ program in 2010. This initiative allows domestic consumers to participate in the brand’s recycling process. ‘Recycle My Sunbrella’ is a special ‘take-back’ program that provides an alternative to disposal of fabric scraps, awning covers, boat covers, and upholstery fabric. Since the inception of the program, business partners and homeowners have recycled more than 600,000 pounds of fabric.

ABOUT  WENDY ANDREU

Wendy Andreu is a French craft designer who seeks to communicate through the materials she is using. A graduate of the Eindhoven Design Academy, she experiments with materials in order to create functional design proposals such as seating, stools and shelves. In her research, context is equally important as concept along with the quality and aesthetic value of her pieces.

The designer is best known for her Regen technique; a waterproof textile developed using cotton rope and silicone, which she has used for fashion, interiors and architecture. The fabric is remarkable in its unusual texture and for the distinctive pattern it gives to each object. In a similar fashion to her work with Sunbrella, Regen is a sustainable creation as it is shaped immediately in 3D rather than being woven, thus producing zero waste.

SUNBRELLA X WENDY ANDREU FELLOWSHIP

Most of Sunbrella’s products are made with solution dyed acrylic, which provides resistance and long-lasting colours whilst also being recyclable. However, Wendy Andreu recognised that the water repellent resin coating the textiles prevents the recyclability of the material and as a result, discarded Sunbrella selvedges are sometimes sent away to be burnt to fuel another factory. Consequently, Wendy Andreu has developed a new technique to ensure the continued sustainability of Sunbrella’s waste and to establish a fresh perspective regarding the value of their waste.

Using the discarded fibres as a raw material, Wendy Andreu has combined them with a water based, solvent free acrylic resin to create a strong and versatile substance, which is at the same time aesthetically pleasing. The final product can be compared to the likes of fibre glass or carbon fibre material and moreover, exposure to this composite material is safe as the fibres are not likely to enter people’s lungs. Each composite material will have its own individual design due to the variability of Sunbrella’s fabric waste in colour and in pattern. The final product will be multipurpose; it can be poured into moulds, cover a pre-existing shape or mixed with other mediums to produce interesting textures.

At the exhibition itself, visitors will be able to discover the different stages of the design process involving Wendy Andreu and Sunbrella, starting from the initial selvedges to the realisation of the final composite product. According to Wendy, the exhibition will demonstrate how an initially abstract concept has been translated into a tangible reality and together, the partnership anticipate that the presentation will educate the audience about the potential of waste to offer new beginnings.
As Sunbrella is currently going into the indoor textile market, perhaps it could be interesting to develop products for the home.