Dear Shaded Viewers,
Romina Cardillo, the designer behind the brand Nous Etudions, works with repurposed and biological materials. The founder of the sustainable, wearable and functional brand from Argentina has been vegan for more than 13 years and has always been concerned with what is happening to our planet. Lately she has been researching and experimenting with Kombucha. Part of the process is using black tea in order to make the Kombucha ferment and gives a natural dye to the Scoby. Scoby is the living home for the bacteria and yeast that transform sweet tea into tangy, fizzy kombucha. The ability of the scoby is that it constantly reforms itself and that makes it possible for us to grow a new scoby from scratch just by combining tea, sugar and some pre-made kombucha. Not that I imagine that many people running to their kitchens to make some…Australia has a kombucha bio-textile research program with the Queensland University of Technology and although the bio-textile is definitely sustainable it is also smelly and unpredictable. It also can be stretched and dried and combined with yeast and then stretched and turned into ‘vegan leather’. For now, kombucha is used for making shoes and jackets. This is the first season that Cardillo has used Kombucha and it is only reflected in one of her designs.
Only one look in Nous Etudions is actually made from Kombucha while the other designs this season are made from recycled threads of plastic bottles which she sources from a company called Texcom in Argentina. Cardillo feels by doing this fashion is able to stop contamination of the planet in the process of manufacturing fabrics. She always looks for sustainable textiles or responsible textile suppliers where she can know the origin of the fabrics and is in a constant push to be more sustainable every day. The collection pictured here is called ‘creatures of the universe’ inspired by nomadic people who live traveling around the world. Her philosophy is that “fashion can be a generator to change and it can also function ethically without harming any living being.”
Later,
Diane
