WRAD X YOOX: fashion with a purpose

Fashion with a purpose. You've heard it before but what does it really mean? For Italian fashion collective WRAD, sustainability and responsibility are more than just buzzwords.

Matteo Ward, Victor Santiago and Silvia Giovanardi are three friends who share a common interest: to explore new ways to make fashion work harder as a platform for sustainability and positivity. Together they launched WRAD – an environmentally conscious label that finds innovative ways of producing key lifestyle pieces (classic tee shirts, denim and outerwear) by reconfiguring the ingredients.

For this, the team look to new solutions to problematic pollutants, unearthing and sourcing natural, renewable and biodegradable materials as well as championing manufacturing processes to lower fashion's carbon footprint (95% in the case of their new denim range) and reduce the chemical output of the printing process which is one of the main culprits of water contamination.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We launched 2015 building up the purpose of the company as a communication channel rather than a fashion brand," says Matteo, a TEDx and Keynote speaker and all round fashion Renaissance Man.

Craftsmanship is key to the WRAD collective but from a marketing perspective, the team's main aim is to target a younger consumer through social media – a demographic that is all too often swayed by affordable throwaway fashion. As such, WRAD is an accessible label with reasonable price points. What's more, quality is paramount, and designs and fabrics have artisanal providence. For example, the team source their linen from Linificio Canapificio Nazionale, an Italian manufacture that has been yarning and spinning natural linen and hemp since the late 19th century; their beeswaxed cotton comes from Scotland's Halley Stevensons, a Dundee-based factory that has been in operation since 1864. WRAD's new wind-resistant and waterproof anorak (290 Euros) is coated in this beeswax veneer and is fabricated from certified organic cotton, which requires 90% less water than regular cotton during the manufacturing process.

Now the WRAD team is speaking to a wider audience thanks to a collaboration with YOOX. The online retailer has launched an exclusive collection of 12 unisex T-shirts, one for each star sign. It's a horoscope with ambition and sincerity: each star sign encourages the wearer to live a more mindful and sustainable way in 2018.

"Our core message is, 'How do you use fashion to engage in a wider conversation about shopping in a more responsible way?'", explains Giovanardi, who also runs her own eponymous brand from Milan; a menswear and womenswear label which is similarly anchored in sustainability and encourages local crafts. The YOOX collection utalises one of WRAD's landmark 'components': graphite as an ink base for its graphic print.

"Our biggest influences have actually been people who have nothing to do with the fashion industry", explains Ward , adding, "one such person is Susanna Martucci who has been working in the field of circular economy for nearly 30 years in Italy."

Martucci runs a company called Alisea Recycled & Reused Object Design in Vicenza. One of Italy's most prominent creative think tanks and production companies working in the field of recyclables, Alisea recently produced the first pencil produced using 80% graphite (called Perpetua) which otherwise would have been destined for disposal.

With Martucci's help, the team explored ideas around recycled graphite as a print 'ink'. "Recycled graphite is natural and not toxic," explains Ward. "One of the biggest problems in the industry is the acceptance of chemicals to dye and print with. The problem is enormous and we underestimate it. As a matter of fact, the Romans used graphite to dye their fabrics!"

WRAD's commitment to futuristic-sounding processes is just as compelling. The team are in the process of patenting their G_PWDR technology – a new dyeing technique for denim. Not something that even the Romans could have forseen.

"Fashion has a clear and important goal and that is to create beauty. So what I am asking every day, is what is this beauty?" says Silvia Giovanardi in beguiling Italian tones. A WRAD X YOOX star sign tee shirt is surely a stylish way to spread her heartfelt message.