Why a textile recycling startup is launching a fashion brand

In a precarious time for fashion’s next-gen materials, Evnru is trying a different tack. Waiting for brands is proving too slow, so the textile recycling startup is putting itself in the driver’s seat and starting a fashion line made with its recycled fibres.

Today, starting with a hoodie launching in collaboration with legacy streetwear designer Christopher Bevans, Evrnu is going straight to consumers, and with its own vision for what its technology can offer.

“We’ve had a challenge, and this is no secret, that brands and retailers don’t want to commit and they don’t really have a budget for early-stage innovation. They’re willing to pay commodity pricing, but they’re unable to pay development pricing — and it really does cost a lot of money to develop these kinds of products,” says Evrnu co-founder and CEO Stacy Flynn. The Evrnu x Bevans hoodie will retail for $600. “Our pivot here was to adequately charge for what it costs to build the product and get it into the hands of the consumer. And more importantly, get the messaging out there around why the product is special and how the product is an upgrade.”

By taking its fibres directly to retail, Evrnu is hoping it can build both momentum and market demand for scaling next-gen materials in a way that working with brands and suppliers alone has not proved possible to do. Brands have been tortuously slow to adopt new technologies at scale, which leaves the companies developing them vulnerable to plateaued growth. As made clear by Renewcell’s bankruptcy announcement two weeks ago, that’s a path to failure if the goal is to transform a mega-industry like fashion.

The cream-coloured woven knit hoodie is an attempt to prove to fashion that another way is possible. While brands dither in their adoption of next-gen materials, startups are growing impatient because they feel they have solutions for some of the industry’s biggest problems, and the industry’s reluctance or inability to act faster is holding them back from delivering on that potential.

“What we saw, not only with our product, but with others, is brands and retailers are inserting sustainable innovation into what I believe is a flawed model and expecting the circular economy to appear,” says Flynn. She makes it clear, however, that Evrnu will also continue to keep working on product development with brands and retailers.

Designers, meanwhile, sometimes want to work in more sustainable ways, but don’t know where to start or are constricted in their positions at major brands that aren’t innovating. For Bevans, a former designer for brands including Nike and Eddie Bauer, and a Woolmark Innovation Prize and CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist, the chance to work with Evrnu’s yarn was a no-brainer. “My ultimate goal is for other brands, mills, designers to want to utilise the Nucycl yarn. It’s really easy to work with. The more we can talk about it, [the more we can make] it accessible, and educating the new, young, upcoming designers so they’re requesting these types of things.”

The way Flynn sees it, the hoodie launch is a microcosm of a fundamentally different approach not just to incorporating a new material into a product, but to fashion’s business model as a whole — the point she believes brands and retailers have been missing all along.

“We’re moving into a different world. We’ve been operating off of the fast fashion model since the mid ’90s; that model is based on buying low and selling high. This model, the circular economy model, is different because it means that all of the cost to the environment has been calculated into the cost of the garment,” she says. There’s the difference that can help to set circularity in motion: “There’s embedded value in that garment, so we want it back. You’ve got to plan your business differently when you have a product like that.”

The hoodie is made with Nucycl, Evrnu’s textile-to-textile recycled fibre, and constructed using 3D knitting technology called Variant3D — which Bevans has been working with in his own design studio and is meant to eliminate production waste. The label contains a QR code that can be scanned for recycling instructions, and the hoodie is being sold on the Evrnu website through Shopify.

Will it sell?

By going DTC, Flynn’s hope is to prove to brands, retailers and suppliers that consumers want the product, while offering a model for how to talk about it. “Watching how our product went into consumer’s hands and how the messaging didn’t really transfer to the consumer, it just became evident that we had to take a different approach,” she says. “My theory is, let’s test it. Let’s give the consumer an upgrade, let’s talk about why it’s an upgrade — and give them a solution when they’re done with it, so that they know that product can be regenerated again at some point in the future.”

The plan is to generate demand by tapping into Evrnu’s advocates and the sustainable fashion community. Part of the reason for the made-to-order approach is “to avoid any waste while we better gauge the market appetite and response”, says Flynn. But she insists that the goal of the launch extends beyond a successful sales figure. “We view this release as more of a learning opportunity than a volume play. It is an opportunity for us to test the appeal of a beautifully designed garment that is fully circular/recyclable, and the mechanics behind our ‘Nucycl Guarantee’, which means it can be returned to us to be ‘reformed’ into a new garment.”

It’s just one hoodie to start, but Flynn and Bevans say there’s more to come.

“We’re cooking up,” Bevans says.