[lifestyle]Why regenerative garments are the ultimate status symbol

[Otman.™]

Sustainably grown fibres, traceable from farm to garment, could be the antidote to climate-destroying fast fashion. But can this trend ever reach the high street?

 

 

picture the scene. Kendall Roy, the longtime heir apparent to the media empire at the heart of HBO’s Succession, is in a dark bar in New York. The embodiment of hyper-privilege, he is explaining to anyone that will listen that the cashmere in his half-zip sweater was harvested by indigenous herders on the rangelands of Mongolia. Regenerative fashion is the future of the industry, and the world, he insists.

It is a fictional scenario, but it is not hard to imagine. Quiet luxury, which was arguably the biggest trend of last year and claimed Roy as its poster boy, is not about logos. Instead, it is about less obvious codes, such as quality cloth and tailoring created with fibres so precious that their provenance and the way they are cultivated is a selling point. So it should come as no surprise that the ultrarich are turning to brands that are working to protect the landscapes where materials such as cashmere, silk and cotton are grown.

 

In a rapidly heating world, what projects status more than wearing fine merino wool grown on a sheep farm that has so many native trees and grasses it sequesters more carbon than it emits?

On Nokomai Station, a sheep farm on New Zealand’s South Island, flocks of dusty-cream merino are free to roam 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres), an area roughly four times the size of Paris. The station is one of approximately 460 sheep farms that make up the New Zealand Merino Company’s regenerative wool initiative, ZQRX. These sheep produce some of the finest wool in the world on a wild and mountainous landscape that is managed according to the principles of regenerative agriculture: restoring biodiversity and minimal intervention to build healthy soil. If it sounds like utopia, that’s because it is. From almost every angle, the farm looks like an AI-generated screensaver.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/article/2024/may/08/why-regenerative-garments-are-the-ultimate-status-symbol