© Luca Tombolini × Yuima Nakazato
– Partnership Combines Inkjet And Dry Fiber Technology To Create Stunning Designs From Recycled Clothing –
Tokyo (Japan) and Paris (France)—Epson has partnered with renowned Japanese fashion designer Yuima Nakazato and his eponymous YUIMA NAKAZATO brand to present a glamorous look at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2023. Announced sustainable creations. YUIMA NAKAZATO utilizes Epson’s digital his textile his printing to recreate his unique and creative worldview, as well as new, more sustainable and industry-changing textile production. With the help of the process I have realized some works.
Epson’s dry fiber technology is already commercially used for recycling office paper and has been adapted to produce printable nonwovens from used clothing as it requires virtually no water. As part of his three-year collaboration between Epson and his YUIMA NAKAZATO, the new fabric manufacturing process has been unveiled in Paris, with the item debuting for the first time at the latter’s runway show at Palais de Tokyo on January 25, 2023. used to create.
The collaboration between Epson and YUIMA NAKAZATO builds on the company’s successful printing support for his couture and evolves the level of his work to enable low-impact production of high-quality custom garments. Both Epson and YUIMA NAKAZATO are passionate about raising awareness of water and material waste associated with overproduction. The Paris show shows how a switch to digital textile printing with greener pigmented inks offers the fashion industry a sustainable and less wasteful means of textile printing.
The fabrics used to create the latest YUIMA NAKAZATO fashion line are derived from materials obtained from used clothing sourced from Africa, the destination for much of the world’s discarded clothing. Nakazato traveled to Kenya, where she collected around 150kg of clothing waste for a “garment pile” of discarded textiles she encountered. Epson then applied the dry her fiber process to produce over 50 meters of new re-fiber nonwovens. Some of it was used to print with pigmented inks using Epson’s Mona Lisa digital printing technology.2
Hitoshi Igarashi of Epson’s Printing Solutions Division explains the importance of this technology as follows. Designers are given 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 in achieving this. It offers the possibility of producing new garment materials that have been customized.”
In the trial of distributed printing of venue decorations, Epson inkjet printers in Japan and France, supported remotely by Epson technicians, were used to create venue space decorations. Epson and her girlfriend YUIMA NAKAZATO will continue to explore the possibility of contributing to a more sustainable fashion industry.
1 Digital textile printing using pigment inks offers a much more sustainable approach to the fabric production process. Compared with conventional analog method. In addition to pigmented inks that require significantly less water, the digital process requires far fewer steps and less complexity. It does not require platemaking, cleaning, and storage unlike analog printing, reduces waste of used ink, and enables on-demand production, contributing to waste reduction.
2 Epson’s Monna Lisa digital Direct-to-Fabric printer uses less water than analogue methods. Pigmented inks are more environmentally friendly, Epson GENESTA pigmented inks are GOTS certified by ECOCERT.