Ambercycle Teams With Bestseller, Tombogo on Regenerated Polyester
Bestseller’s Selected brand is once again centering circularity in its latest release, a limited-edition dress made with regenerated polyester.
The dress represents Bestseller’s first product made with Cycora from Ambercycle, a circular materials science company it invested in a year and a half ago. The “regenerated” polyester converts post-consumer textiles and industrial waste into new, usable material. Selected Femme’s Cycora summer dress, available Wednesday on Selected’s website and at select retail stores in Denmark, is 50 percent Cycora and 50 percent recycled polyester.
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“We are very focused on accelerating the enormous opportunity of enabling circularity in the fashion industry,” Shay Sethi, CEO and co-founder of Ambercycle, said in a statement. “We see textile-to-textile regeneration as one of the most impactful actions the industry can take toward decarbonization and are grateful for like-minded, supportive partners like Bestseller who operate with a long-term focus on circularity.”
Selected earned the right to use Bestseller’s first delivery of Cycora after winning the company’s internal Circular Design Challenge in September. Selected debuted designs born from that competition in March as part of a circular capsule collection that included a 100 percent recycled cotton T-shirt, a 100 percent organic cotton denim set and an undyed overshirt.
“Companies like ours, with ambitious sustainability targets and commitments, must continuously support textile-to-textile recycling innovation to make it an everyday reality,” Camilla Skjønning Jørgensen, Bestseller’s innovation manager, said in a statement. “Ambercycle has a technology that is quite unique, using molecular regeneration which is less dependent on energy compared to other recycling processes.”
Ambercycle, which is currently moving toward commercializing Cycora, estimates the material offsets close to half the carbon dioxide emissions associated with virgin-polyester production. In the past year, it has collaborated with the performance fabric firm Pertex, running brand Saucony and, most recently, the fashion label Tombogo.
Tombogo, which debuted its Cycora collection at Paris Fashion Week last month, first learned of the materials company last year when it released its own collaboration with Saucony around the same time as Ambercycle, founder and designer Tommy Bogo said in a video promoting the collaboration. Both based in Los Angeles, the two companies linked up and decided to collaborate on a collection. Inspired by Bogo’s initial visit to the Cycora laboratory and warehouses, the collection features workwear-inspired pieces, including a multi-use jumpsuit with zip-off pants; a jacket with detachable sleeves and backpack; and shorts.
