The Art of Balance #52 | Carlo Covini, what will you wear?
Carlo Covini (Lenzing’s Business Development and Project Manager) is the 52nd participant in the initiative “The Art of Balance / Pandemopraxy”, launched by Cittadellarte. This episode’s guest hopes that environment and sustainability will soon receive great social attention, the same as it has been for distancing and face mask use regulations. Covini then focuses on the company he works for illustrating how ethics meets fashion also through REFIBRA™ technology and TENCEL™ materials. “We collaborate with important brands,” he said, “but also with young fashion designers fiercely daring to interpret textile sustainability in innovative and uncompromising ways”.
 Redazione, 04/09/2020

What will you wear?
Pandemic, social distancing, lockdown, smart working… frameworks, habits and behavioural patterns have broken down. We will have immediate and dramatic socio-economic effects and profound changes in the medium and long run. We are experiencing a cultural ‘reset’ and a drop in consumption whose consequences are difficult to estimate.
I personally hope that the attention shown in dealing with the pandemic in terms of distancing, masks, sanitising, will now be addressed to the environment and that, as far as the textile industry is concerned, people will become more informed about materials and processes.
The system in question and the sector will have to develop a higher level of competence and sensitivity about the materials used and worn, and even about the productive processes, so that the much-talked-about traceability can assume real meaning.

I’ve been working at Lenzing for years, a company that has been investing in productive processes respectful of the environment since the ‘70s. Today, the brands TENCEL™ and ECOVERO™ are synonyms for sustainability.

Lenzing’s factory, in Austria, is a bio-refinery operating in respect of the environment in producing fibres through the optimal use of all the resources contained in wood, a renewable natural material. The fibres produced are certified as compostable and biodegradable… they can therefore be reabsorbed by nature.

Lenzing’s strategy could be summarised in “Innovation and attention for the environment”. We collaborate with important brands, but also with young fashion designers fiercely daring to interpret textile sustainability in innovative and uncompromising ways.
I’ll mention two recent innovations: the REFIBRA™ technology, which represents Lenzing’s innovative answer to the need for a circular economy and for the recycling of textile products pre- and post-consumer; TENCEL™ Luxe, a continuous yarn for the silk sector.

And what will I wear? I like living in the country but I also enjoy my managerial job so, like Machiavelli, “I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of the court and palace”, in other words from a denim shirt to a tie, but with a common thread: comfort and attention to materials, possibly made of TENCEL™.