Wrad – innovate or dye

When the makers of Wrad found out that fashion is the second-largest environmentally damaging industry in the world they were inspired to try to change this.

In 2015 Matteo Ward therefore left the comfort zone of his job with the aim of influencing the status quo and finding a better solution together with Victor Santiago and Silvia Giovanardi.

Did you know that the usual process of dyeing fabrics is harmful to the environment, squanders resources and, on top of this, is also dangerous and toxic? In recent years Wrad has therefore started to hunt down alternatives. They found the answer in a natural mineral, graphite, which was used by the Romans for 2,000 years to dye fabrics. Today, it is used and wasted in huge quantities by businesses operating in the production of graphite-based products like batteries or brake coating materials. For months the makers behind the brand worked on integrating the traditional Roman process into a modern circulation system. They simply reuse the graphite powder that is otherwise destined for landfill.  They use circulation technology to dye their Graphi-Tees™ that uses up to 10g of waste graphite per t-shirt. There is currently a patent pending on the technology. This is made possible thanks to G_PWDR™, an innovative product that the label has developed in collaboration with Perpetua. Ward  has rightly received the Red Dot award for this.

Another innovation used at Wrad is chitosan – a natural polymer that is obtained through processing waste from the food industry. It can in fact be found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans. Thanks to its properties, coating cotton fibres with chitosan enables the use of water and energy to be drastically reduced in the manufacture of denim.  It also enables a considerable reduction in the quantity of chemicals required for finishing the material. It is a patented process that has been developed by ItalDenim in collaboration with other Italian partners. Chitosan is hypo-allergenic and has natural antibacterial properties, which is why it is also widely used in the biomedical field. The environmental impact of denim that has been treated with chitosan and dyed using a ‘smart indigo’ dyeing process is around 80% less than with comparable denim fabrics.

Find Wrad at SEEK Berlin.

FACTS

DATE
16 & 18 January 2018

OPENING TIMES
16 + 17 January 2018 10:00-19:00
18 January 2018 10:00-17:00

LOCATION
ARENA BERLIN
Eichenstraße 4
12435 Berlin