Sustainable fashion from Epson and designer Yuima Nakazato

Inkjet and dry fiber technologies create designs from recycled clothing

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Sustainable fashion from Epson and designer Yuima Nakazato
Epson’s dry fiber technology has been adapted to produce printable non-woven fabric from used garments.

Epson, a provider of digital and printing solutions, has announced a partnership with Japanese fashion designer Yuima Nakazato and his eponymous Yuima Nakazato brand at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week Spring – Summer 2023 to unveil creations that are both stunning and sustainable. 

In addition to utilizing Epson’s digital textile printing to reproduce his unique and creative worldview, Yuima Nakazato realized some of its creations with the help of a new, more sustainable and potentially industry-transforming textile production process. 

Epson’s dry fiber technology, which is already used commercially to recycle office paper and which requires virtually no water, has been adapted to produce printable non-woven fabric from used garments. The new fabric production process was revealed in Paris as part of a three-year collaboration between Epson and Yuima Nakazato and was used in the creation of items for the first time during the latter’s runway show at the Palais de Tokyo on 25 January 2023.

The collaboration between Epson and Yuima Nakazato builds on the success of the company’s printing support for his couture and evolves the level of his creations to enable the low-impact production of high-quality custom garments. Both Epson and Yuima Nakazato are keen to raise awareness of the water and material waste associated with excess production. The Paris Show illustrates how switching to digital textile printing using more environmentally friendly pigment inks offers the fashion industry a more sustainable and less wasteful means of textile printing.

The fabric taken to create the latest Yuima Nakazato fashion line was derived from material from used garments sourced from Africa, the destination for many discarded garments from elsewhere in the world. Nakazato visited Kenya where he collected around 150 kg of waste garment material destined for the “clothes mountain” of discarded textiles he encountered there. Epson then applied its dry fiber process to produce over 50 metres of new re-fiberised non-woven fabric, some of which was used for printing with pigment inks with Epson’s Monna Lisa digital printing technology.

Hitoshi Igarashi from Epson’s Printing Solutions Division explains the importance of the technology: “Although in its early stages, Epson believes its dry fiber technology combined with pigment ink digital printing could offer the fashion industry a much more sustainable future, significantly reducing water use while allowing designers the freedom to fully express their creativity.

Epson’s Environmental Vision is committed to contributing to a circular economy, and this development could be one step towards achieving this. Dry fiber technology applied to the fashion industry offers the possibility of producing material for new clothes that have been recycled from used garments.” 

In a trial of distributed printing for venue decoration, Epson inkjet printers in Japan and France with remote support from Epson engineers were used to create decorations in the venue space. Both Epson and Yuima Nakazato intend to continue exploring the possibilities for contributing to a more sustainable fashion industry.

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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