Despite increasing awareness, the massive clothing waste problem in fashion is not slowing down. Every year, an estimated 11.3 million tons of textile waste are discarded in the United States, and these pieces end up in landfills and fill up already overrun secondhand markets around the world. It’s not just a fast fashion problem, though. It’s an industry-wide issue that even luxury brands participate in. And while there are dozens of partial solutions, like recycling and upcycling, few address the overproduction and inefficient manufacturing processes that cause textile waste.
That is where Vega, a new 3D weaving technology created by the founders of unspun, comes into play. On Saturday night, Eckhaus Latta brought the Vega technology front and center to New York Fashion Week, highlighting the power of sustainable innovation in a big, exciting way.
3D tech is certainly not new in textile creation, but using it to create circular fabric at a large scale actually is. Over the last few decades, the way clothing is made has not changed much. Fabric is created on flat looms and then cut into pieces that are then sewn into clothing, leaving excess waste every step of the way. Vega is a revolutionary circular loom that weaves yarn into tubes instead of flat sheets therefore eliminating waste in the cutting process. It also uses an advanced algorithm to quickly customize sizing as each tube is created.
“When I first came to understand textile waste, there were only three solutions: do we burn [extra clothes]? Do we send them to another country, or do we trash them?” Beth Esponnette, one of three co-founders of unspun tells Teen Vogue during a conversation at their headquarters in San Francisco. “No one said, 'Why is this a problem in the first place? What could we be changing so that this isn't a problem?' That’s why we wanted to start [at the] design [stage].”
Kevin Martin, another co-founder, chimed in, adding, “This is the first time that technology even is at a place where we can think about different ways of manufacturing. If you rethink that assumption of how clothing is made and have the technology to rebuild the whole system from scratch, you would make it massively different.” He said it was important for them to look at this as a significant update to the industry and not a replacement.
As for the Eckhaus Latta collection, the Vega team felt it would take an innovative brand to launch the technology to the high fashion world. As we walked through the facility to see the machines, the team excitedly showed off the versatility of what can be created - from a denim pant leg to the foil-woven pieces of the Eckhauss Latta collection that would end up on the NYFW runway.
“We’re always looking for new approaches and different ways of looking at garment construction, all the way up from a material standpoint," Zoe Latta, Co-founder of Eckhaus Latta, said in a press release before the show. "That’s what makes working with unspun so exciting, they think in the future."
The Spring / Summer ‘24 collection, shown in the lobby of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, had several pieces made using Vega tech, including wide-leg pants woven with metallic foil yarn and another made from twine and plastic. The roughness of the pieces was complemented with soft knit or slinky mesh tops.
Pieces made from 3D weaving don’t look any different from a traditional piece of clothing you’d see in the collection, but the way they were created puts material and waste reduction front and center. The real story is the possibility.
The pieces that ended up in the show are just the start of how this technology could be used to change the future of fashion. Making customized clothing more affordable and more accessible for brands around the world could be a way to cut back on waste, but also a way to make clothing that fits better and is, in turn, less disposable. The team created the technology and the machines to be used quickly and efficiently so that any brand could use it.
“It's not just for luxury brands. It's about what the average customer in the middle of America buys too," Walden Lam, unspun’s third co-founder, added. "We need to be thinking about how can this scale to a point where it is as cost-efficient and economical as overseas mass manufacturing,”
While technological advances can be complicated with manufacturing providing millions of jobs, the unspun team feels this is a necessary advancement to keep the fashion industry sustainable and improve garment manufacturing globally. “This technology may be revolutionary but it should already be available,” Martin says. “We’re going to make sure it is.”
