Ganni Continues to be a Sustainable Queen, Partnering with Ambercycle
This week's All Things Fashion Tech Newsroom: Ganni, Jacquemus and Manolo Blahnik show their alliance to fashion tech. Plus ASOS and SHEIN make some sustainability moves.
Ganni signed a 4-year deal with Ambercycle, a polyester recycler
Jacquemus partners with Apple’s iPhone for their SS2205 show
Manolo Blahnik is the latest luxury brand taking on gaming with Drest partnership
Hugo Boss launches AI-powered product content
ASOS moves their marketplace of vintage boutique sellers to their main site
SHEIN partners with polyester recycling process at Donghua University
Ganni inks four-year deal with polyester recycler
By Maliha Shoaib of Vogue Business
Cult Danish fashion brand Ganni has signed a four-year agreement to use Cycora, a recycled polyester created by LA-based material innovation startup Ambercycle. Crucially, the deal is an offtake agreement, meaning Ganni agreed to purchase Cycora before Ambercycle had produced it — something sustainability advocates have been pushing more brands to commit to.
Ganni co-founder Nicolaj Reffstrup says he believes in Cycora’s potential to “change the game” when it comes to textile-to-textile recycling, which is notoriously hard to do because many textiles use blended materials that are difficult or impossible to separate, and when textiles are recycled the quality tends to degrade over time. Most recycled polyester is currently made from plastic bottles.
Cycora is made from a mix of post-consumer and post-industrial polyester textile waste, though Ganni has chosen to only use Cycora from post-consumer textile waste. Ambercycle says it is able to maintain the quality of the material over time because it uses chemicals to separate the molecules of the polyester, processing it into resin that is transformed into yarn — and it’s also able to separate polyester from materials where it’s mixed with other fibres. Along with Ganni, Ambercycle has ongoing partnerships with Inditex, Arc’teryx, Reformation and Gap Athleta (Inditex and Arc’teryx also signed offtake agreements).
Jacquemus returns to Paris Fashion Week with Apple partnership
By Don-Alvin Adegeest of FashionUnited
French fashion house Jacquemus, renowned for its cinematic runway presentations in countryside locales, is making a much-anticipated return to Paris Fashion Week, this time with a high-tech twist. For its upcoming collection, Jacquemus will collaborate with Apple to revolutionise the way fashion is captured and shared.
In a statement on Instagram, accompanied by a sleek video of a robotic arm holding an iPhone 16, the brand announced that its new show, “La Croisière”, will take place in Paris on January 26. Uniquely, the entire event will be documented using Apple’s latest technology, including its state-of-the-art cinematic slow-motion feature and 4K120 fps Dolby Vision recording. According to Yahoo, runway photography will be shot entirely on iPhones, with close-ups leveraging the advanced telephoto lens capabilities.
This partnership represents a new intersection of fashion and technology, a sentiment Jacquemus underscored in its statement, which described the collaboration as exemplifying "the fusion of fashion and technology, captivating audiences globally." The brand added that further details of the partnership would be "communicated in due course."
This collaboration with Apple signals not only a fresh chapter for Jacquemus but also an emblematic moment in the growing convergence of luxury fashion, technology and sponsorship, that could redefine the art of the runway.
Luxury marketing is taking on gaming
By Zofia Zwieglinska of Glossy
Manolo Blahnik is the latest luxury brand targeting young consumers through a gaming partnership.
The brand is teaming with DREST, a 6-year-old mobile game that lets players style avatars with luxury products. The game relaunched at the end of last year with new brand offerings, including one allowing brands to partner on “quests.” Quests allow Drest users to complete interactive brand challenges and style avatars with brands’ items to unlock rewards and exclusive experiences.
ASOS finalises integration of vintage and boutique Marketplace sellers onto ASOS.com
As part of its commitment to providing customers with the best and most relevant product, ASOS will complete the migration of vintage and independent boutique sellers from ASOS Marketplace to ASOS.com by April 2025.
Integrating sellers onto ASOS.com will benefit customers by offering one central destination for style that showcases all that ASOS has to offer. It will seamlessly curate ASOS own brands with high-profile partner brands, independent brands, and vintage sellers, all through ASOS’ unique fashion lens.
Brands that migrate will benefit from increased traffic and access to customers, as well as enhanced site functionality such as Buy the Look, which enables customers to buy entire outfits from multiple sellers in one click.
Shazmeen Malik, Brands Director at ASOS said, "We’re excited to integrate vintage and boutique sellers onto ASOS.com. This migration embodies our commitment to curating the very best product for our customers and empowers our sellers with increased visibility and enhanced customer experiences whilst maintaining inventory control. We look forward to the future possibilities this integration brings.”
Hugo Boss harnesses power of AI: last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
By Retail Tech Innovation Hub
Hugo Boss has launched AI powered product content live across its e-commerce platforms globally.
“This isn’t just about leveraging cutting-edge technology, it’s about delivering meaningful innovation that drives tangible results for our customers and our business,” says Jan Philipp Wintjes, Executive Vice President Global Omnichannel.
He adds: “By harnessing the power of AI, the Hugo Boss Web3 & Immersive Experiences team is pioneering the use of advanced AI tools in image and video creation. This launch represents a future where technology seamlessly meets creativity and precision. This is AI in action, not as a concept, but as a catalyst for growth, efficiency, and improved customer experiences.”
SHEIN Achieves Milestone with Polyester Recycling Development
By Waste360
SHEIN, the global online on-demand fashion lifestyle retailer, has marked its latest milestone in its evoluSHEIN strategy with the development of an innovative polyester recycling process with Donghua University, a leading research institute specialising in textile innovation and research, as part of a multi-year collaboration.
This innovative polyester recycling process accepts a wider range of materials, including both pre- and post-consumer polyester feedstock, such as textile waste and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. This offers greater flexibility in sourcing for feedstock, and as a result, improved cost efficiency compared to the recycled polyester options currently used in SHEIN's products. Testing by Donghua's team of researchers has also shown that the recycled polyester fabrics produced through this process can be recycled repeatedly without significant impact on the material properties of the resulting fabric, as the inputs are chemically broken down, refined, and reconstituted at the polymer level.
This collaboration with Donghua University is in line with SHEIN's commitment to transition 31% of the polyester used in SHEIN-branded products to recycled polyester by 2030.
SHEIN also continues to support innovation in circular solutions and encourage adoption of next-generation fibres. In September 2024, SHEIN launched the evoluSHEIN x Anitta collection, featuring styles made with Regracell® – a soft, breathable fibre made from a mix of recycled textile waste and FSC-certified wood inputs. In addition, SHEIN has partnered with Aloqia (formerly Queen of Raw) since 2022, to incorporate deadstock fabrics - leftover materials from other brands - into exclusive, limited-edition designs. A limited-edition SHEIN X Rescued collection was launched in May 2024, showcasing designs by SHEIN X designers using deadstock materials sourced through SHEIN's partnership with Aloqia.
*Note from Mary: Reading that Shein is putting efforts towards recycling & next-gen fibers is great and all, but I’m still their biggest hater. IMO, nothing they can do will offset everything they’ve already done.
