Silk Specialist Mantero Seta Steps Up Green Efforts

The Como, Italy-based textile company is debuting Resilk, an upcycled silk fabric.

As the whole fashion system is in flux due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are reevaluating their priorities — and putting sustainability at the core of their activities.

Como, Italy-based silk specialist Mantero Seta SpA has found more than one reason during lockdown to step up its sustainable commitment, as part of its Respect program of social corporate responsibility initiatives.

First of all, it is important to define the similarities but also the differences between a virus and a bacteria to clarify the purpose of antiviral and antibacterial fabrics.

Bacteria are unicellular organisms. They are living cells that can be either beneficial or harmful to other organisms. Viruses, on the other hand, are considered to be particles that are somewhere between living and nonliving cells. Viruses have to invade the body of a host organism in order to replicate their particles.

A bacterium can survive on its own, inside or outside the body. Most bacteria aren’t harmful. Most viruses are pathogenic.

Therefore, the purpose of antiviral versus antibacterial fabrics are slightly different. Bacteria in a fabric is more of a nuisance rather than a threat as they — in combination with moisture emitted from our body — can start to stink, and the more bacteria live in our clothing, the more annoying this can get, but normally the consequences are not pathogenic. Hence, the main purpose of an antibacterial fabric is to inhibit the growth of bacteria to keep a fabric fresh to wear for many days or nights without the need of washing it daily after wearing.

#??#

On the other hand, viruses — needless to say, these days — are more than a nuisance. Hence, the purpose of an antiviral fabric is to inhibit any kind of host cells that a virus has or can invade on the fabric, waiting for a passage to the doors of our body. And given the potentially lethal consequence of a virus, there is a different level of testing and certification needed that a fabric can qualify to be antiviral.

Four years in the making, the company has introduced the Resilk regenerated fabric developed in partnership with solution provider Marchi & Fildi. The idea stemmed from the need to upcycle pre-consumer deadstock coming from the fabrics’ selection, as the company’s clients — including luxury fashion brands, which often ask for exclusive textiles — would not accept those with flaws, consequently forcing the brand to burn them.

“The project has a sustainable silver lining in all its aspects, preventing us from burning economic, ethical and environmental assets,” noted Franco Mantero, the company’s chief executive officer, and the fourth generation of the founding family.

Unwanted 100 percent silk fabrics are destroyed through mechanical processes to obtain a new yarn that is GRS-certified and weaved into new textiles that boast the same gleam of silk but feel like cashmere for their softness. The Resilk fabric is suitable for women’s and men’s wear as well as for upholstery and Mantero said its price is in line with similar textiles.

The fabric is employed for a capsule collection of garments within the fall collection of the company’s owned Mantero 1902 brand.

“The pandemic has convinced us that we need to reevaluate the way we live and the way we do business, which might be in sharp contrast with the essence of luxury itself, in which the goal is to obtain a product that is as perfect as it can be,” noted Mantero. To this end, he added that the eco-friendly component should come hand in hand with a good design and quality, as commercial success cannot rely on the green aspect only.

#??#

Mantero’s eco-friendly efforts are extended to the entire production process — of regular silk for scarves and ties that are ZDHC-certified — by avoiding harmful chemicals and relying on a system that reduces CO2 emissions, as well as photovoltaic panels, currently supplying 20 percent of the company’s energetic needs. A cogeneration system will bring the quota up to 80 percent in the next few years.

All these measures are “even more important in the wake of COVID-19, which forced us to reevaluate our priorities, keeping the same goals we already had but giving a different priority to each of them,” Mantero contended.

The company’s broader CSR program is intended to promote a sustainable and responsible way of doing business across finance, workforce, the environment and the products, in sync with the United Nations’ SDGs.

To this end, Mantero has brought on board a younger workforce with 100 employees under 30 especially in the design department coming from fashion schools such as Milan’s Naba and Istituto Marangoni and London’s Royal College of Arts, among others. It has also partnered with the U.N.’s UNHCR program aimed at offering a chance and job to refugees coming from Ethiopia, Syria, Pakistan and Mali, with “personal stories that are very different from what we’re used to,” Mantero said.

For more industry information, please pay attention to Knitting Fair.

Source: WWD

#??#

A composite textile material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite) is a material made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties that, when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components.

Archaeologists say humans have been using composites for at least 4,000 to 6,000 years. In ancient Egypt, bricks made from mud and straw to encase and reinforce wooden structures such as forts and monuments. In parts of Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, indigenous cultures build structures from wattle (planks or strips of wood) and daub (a composite of mud or clay, straw, gravel, lime, hay, and other substances using a heat source for backing and drying from the sun).

Another advanced civilization, the Mongols, were also pioneers in the use of composites. Beginning around 1200 A.D., they began building high performance recurved reinforced bows out of wood, bone, and natural adhesive, wrapped with silk and pine resign (birch bark). These were far more powerful and accurate than simple wooden bows, helping Genghis Khan’s Mongolian Empire to spread across Asia.

The modern era of composites began in the 20th century with the invention of early plastics such as Bakelite and vinyl as well as engineered wood products like plywood. Another crucial composite, Fiberglas, was invented in 1935. It was far stronger than earlier composites, could be moulded and shaped, and was extremely lightweight and durable.

World War II hastened the invention of still more petroleum-derived composite materials, many of which are still in use today, including polyester. The 1960s saw the introduction of even more sophisticated composites, such as Kevlar and carbon fibre.

#??#

A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite) is a material made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties that, when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components. The individual components remain separate and distinct within the finished structure, differentiating composites from mixtures and solid solutions.

How composite materials are classified? The composite materials are commonly classified based on matrix constituent. The major composite classes include Organic Matrix Composites (OMCs), Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) and Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs). … These three types of matrixes produce three common types of composites.

“Textile” is deﬁned as “…originally a woven fabric, but the term ‘textiles’ is now also applied to ﬁbers, ﬁlaments and yarns, natural or man-made, and most products for which they are the principal raw materials. Hence, textiles are ﬁbrous materials. Fibres in a textile are assembled into yarns or ﬁbrous plies, which are arranged to form a textile fabric.

Textile structural composites represent a class of advanced materials, which are reinforced with textile preforms for structural or load bearing applications. As ﬁbers and yarns in textiles are held together by friction, the yarns have to be bent or twisted to provide transversal forces, necessary for friction. The internal structure of a textile is the result of such bending of the yarns, introduced during manufacturing of the fabric.

The internal structure determines the interaction between the ﬁbers and yarns in dry fabric during manufacturing, transferring the applied load to structural ﬁbrous elements of the fabric, which resist the load by their deformation (primarily tension, bending/buckling, lateral compression and friction, and to a lesser extent torsion and shear).

#??#

The internal structure means yarn material and its structure and fabric structure determines the performance of a consolidated composite as well: the stress response to the local deformation depends on the local orientation of ﬁbers, which is imposed by there in for cement architecture, and in its turn deﬁne whether damage will be initiated in that particular location and whether it will propagate.

Presently, textile structural composites are part of a larger category of composite materials (Shishoo et al 1971 and Wiemer et al 2000). In general, composites can be defined as a selected combination of dissimilar materials with a specific internal structure and external shape. The unique combination of two material components leads to singular mechanical BEHAVIOR OF TEXTILE PREFORMS DURING COMPOSITE MANUFACTURING

Composite manufacturing techniques, used for textile reinforcements, are covered in Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites: Manufacturing and Certiﬁcation Issues. Two main processes involved during the manufacturing are shaping of a textile preform on a three-dimensional mould and impregnation of the preform with resin. The behaviour of the preform during manufacturing is determined correspondingly by its formability and permeability.

The formability (drapability) of a textile fabric reﬂects the easiness of the initially ﬂat fabric to conform to (drape over) a given 3D shape. The permeability of the preform is a tensor coefﬁcient K of Darcy equation, relating the ﬂow velocity of a ﬂuid through the porous medium to the pressure gradient.

For more industry information, please pay attention to Knitting Fair.

Source: textile school

#??#

The wave of innovation that has marked the evolution of the textile sector in Europe and elsewhere in the past decade has increased the number of performances the garments we wear now boast — think antibacterial, natural stretch and wrinkle-free qualities.

But unusual times call for unusual projects and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic bringing customers’ safety and health concerns to the forefront, textile firms in Europe have been banking on a new performance-driven innovation: antiviral fabrics.

As reported, apparel and accessories inspired by personal protective equipment could be a $10 billion to $20 billion opportunity for the fashion industry. But what about antiviral fabrics that luxury players can source from their usual suppliers and craft into suits, shirts and cocktail dresses?

Textile firms developing this category have made clear these fabrics do not substitute for PPE, nor do they prevent the risk of contagion. Rather, they are seen as an additional layer of performance that is likely to become the new norm in manufacturing.

The latest brainchild of cotton specialist Albini Group’s Albini Next think tank for smart innovations is a family of antiviral fabrics dubbed ViroFormula, developed in partnership with Swiss company HeiQ, which provided the chemical treatment called Viroblock. This destroys the virus within five minutes, the company claims.

Treated with liposomes combined with a silver compound that enhances the antiviral property, the ViroFormula’s range of fabrics — intended for shirts, jackets, trousers and to be applied soon to knitwear yarns, too — marks an evolution from existing textiles that were adjusted to become suitable for the treatment, maximizing their performance without any impact on quality.

“When we realized the violent impact that COVID-19 could have on the world, strong enough to freeze the economy and change social behaviors, we prompted HeiQ to apply the treatments they were already developing for PPEs to regular apparel,” explained Fabio Tamburini, chief executive officer of Cotonificio Albini, the group’s production arm.

#??#

Despite the shutdown of all nonessential manufacturing businesses that Italy enforced on March 23, the group powered ahead to bring the family of fabrics to the market in less than two months, instead of the six to nine months that are typically required, conducting about 1,200 tests.

Similarly, the Marzotto Wool Manufacturing company partnered with Polygiene, a spin-off of Sweden-based chemical company Perstorp Group, to adapt the ViralOff finish to fabrics crafted from natural yarns, including wool, linen and cotton, which required the fabrics’ manufacturing process to be revised.

The compound, which is made of titanium dioxide and silver chlorine ions, underwent lab tests showing it can eliminate 99 percent of viruses within two hours, or 93 percent in 30 minutes.

Before taking it to the market, the company wants to assess that the treatment can persist on fabrics such as wool, stretch wool and washable wool after at least three to six dry cleanings. Marzotto already evaluated that cotton significantly retains the coating compound after 15 water washes, with a 4 percent reduction in efficacy.

“At the beginning of the lockdown in Italy, the idea started taking shape, even though wool itself boasts antimicrobiotic features,” commented ceo Giorgio Todesco. “We had never thought about antiviral treatments, despite the fact that Polygiene had already developed a few solutions during the 2002-03 SARS outbreak, but customers easily forgot about that epidemic because the impact was limited to a few regions of the world.”

In the U.K., Promethean Particles has cooperated with local textile businesses to explore the antiviral effect of its copper nanoparticles technology when embedded via melt extrusion into nonwoven polymer fibers.

#??#

Initial results showed that the antimicrobial effect can last longer than in surface-coated textiles, but the company is assessing the efficacy in collaboration with Mexican research institute CIQA and textile trade association NWTexNet through independent laboratories in the U.S. and the U.K. “If we can show evidence of antiviral properties from the testing being carried out, then it’s particularly relevant to the current COVID-19 outbreak, and we may see a lot more urgency in its development,” noted Selina Ambrose, technical manager at Promethean Particles.

Also, Germany-based chemical company Rudolf Group has conducted lab tests on its RUCO-BAC AGP technology introduced in 2005 to assess whether it could boast antiviral properties on the family of coronaviruses. Made of microstructures, or vehicles, that carry and release an appropriate quantity of silver ions on the treated textile, the solution enhances the durability of the chemical’s antibacterial qualities, up to 100 water washes.

As an evolution of antimicrobial or odor-control treatments already widespread and common among textile suppliers, the antiviral fabrics seem to be generating buzz and interest.

For more industry information, please pay attention to Knitting Fair.

Source: WWD

#??#