The starting point of our research journey

Entering into the world of textiles last year we had no idea our view of the industry as well as our personal goals and dreams were about to change so drastically. We are two students in the textile value chain program who became friends along the way. Having both come from business management backgrounds, textile management was quite a new area for us. On the first day of school, the day we met, we jokingly looked at each other wondering what it was that we were actually going to be studying. What we didn’t know was the amount of sustainability knowledge we were about to gain. Our first year as master’s students changed our view of the textile industry. We were completely inspired by the fact the industry is in a phase of changes in regards to sustainability and there are so many opportunities to become apart of it.

As we began to question how we could become apart of this change we tried picturing ourselves working in one of the large textile companies. This led us to realize right now, as we study we have the opportunity to try to do something ourselves and from this, the idea of creating our own company was born. Our company is called Whip Appeal of Sweden and we produce swimwear in collaboration with guest artists. From the very beginning we decided we wanted to do everything possible to implement sustainability into the core of every process. As we have learned through research in school, the most impact in regards to sustainability lies in the design process. For this reason sourcing our materials and thinking about textile recycling and circular economies was of the highest importance. We soon found out, it’s not as easy as it seems. The purpose of our field study is to take a deeper look into textile recycling and implementing a circular production system into a company such as ours. Follow us along our journey to learn more!

//Iuliia & Alicia