Good threads: Sustainability at Heimtextil 2020

The conversation in the design world today is focused on the pressing need for sustainability with the realisation that casual consumerism is untenable. This is vital in the textiles world, given that textiles are used for a vast spectrum of requirements – from domestic soft furnishings to acoustics and fire protection in the contract sector.

Heimtextil, the international trade fair for home and contract textiles, held in Frankfurt, will address this at its upcoming edition (from 7 to 10 January, 2020). This could not be more pertinent, given the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2018, urging global warming to be limited to a maximum of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

At Heimtextil next year, environmentalism will be interwoven with sociopolitical issues, including growing tolerance of cultural diversity. The ‘Heimtextil Trends 2020’ overarching theme will be ‘Where I Belong’, a celebration of how personal identity – increasingly freed from boundaries of gender, culture and nationality – has become multi-layered.

The theme will be expressed via five design trends forecast for 2020/ 2021, explored in an area called Trend Space. Evocatively entitled Maximum Glam, Pure Spiritual, Active Urban, Heritage Lux and Multi-Local, these trends will be intelligently unpicked in an accompanying Trend Book, co-produced by Heimtextil and trends analyst agency Stijlinstituut Amsterdam. ‘Sustainability is crucial,’ says Anne Marie Commandeur, the agency’s founder and Trend Book’s editor-in-chief. ‘Yet today many of us feel disconnected from manufacturing processes.’

One highlight at Trend Space will be the new Future Materials Library. ‘It will showcase products that are 100 percent sustainable, and will be curated by UK research and innovations agency Franklin Till,’ says Commandeur. ‘We’re potentially on the brink of a materials revolution that could help rebalance our relationship with the planet,’ says Kate Franklin, Franklin Till’s co-founder. ‘Until now, we’ve relied on natural raw materials, turned into products enjoyed only too briefly. We need a smarter, cyclical approach to materials in contrast to our current linear, take-make-discard relationship with them, and a new future seems within our reach.’

Heimtextil’s inclusion of Future Materials Library is particularly relevant with the number of green textile manufacturers rising, and now numbering more than 250 exhibiting companies. The fair’s visitors can look these up on its invaluable Green Directory. At Future Materials Library, each textile sample will be shown alongside information about its provenance, manufacturing process and potential afterlife. Exhibitors will include Charlotte Cazals, who makes recycled textiles, Piñatex, a company that reuses pineapple-leaf fibre, and firms, such as Mogu, that transform living materials like mycelium into products.

A programme of talks will feature speakers from such pioneering producers of eco textiles as Waste No More, Margent Farm and Hey Jute, underlining Heimtextil’s commitment to promoting sustainable textile production.

© Architonic