Silent Luxury

SILENT LUXURY met with Javier Goyeneche, President and Founder of the sustainable lifestyle brand ECOALF, to discuss the current state and future of the fashion industry and to answer the question: Why buy a recycled product when you can buy a new one?

Silent Luxury (SL): How do you define quality?

Javier Goyeneche: I love and appreciate a product that combines sustainability and design. For me, the value has to do with the footprint a product has in the world.

SL: Your garments are made from recycled materials – essentially, your raw material is waste. Do you ever worry about running out of it?

Goyeneche: This is an interesting point, because when we started, sustainability wasn't cool. Especially in Spain it was considered hippie, it was a synonym of bad design and quality. The first time I had a meeting with the head buyer of El Corte Inglés she asked me why anybody would buy a recycled product when they can buy a new one. This has changed. I think very few people nowadays consider a re- or upcycled product to be of bad quality. But when it comes to waste itself not much has changed. Now they are saying that 16 tons of waste get into the ocean every minute. No, we will not run out of raw material.

SL: Is the fashion industry the right place to start making change?

Goyeneche: Indeed, fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world in terms of water use, emissions and waste. But of course, fashion can be sexy, fashion is emotional, it is about beauty and aesthetics, about looking good, but in a sustainable way.

SL: Why aren't all fashion companies following your lead? Could ECOALF become the iPhone of fashion?

Goyeneche: ECOALF can show that it is possible to have all these fabrics made from recycled materials, that it is possible not use up so much water, that it is possible not to do promotions. However, at the end of the day, we don't have the volume to change things in a big way. The big change has to come from the major players who have the volume and the resources.

In my opinion the biggest problem of the fashion industry lies in a business model that doesn't work: this is coming, this is going, things are bought and thrown away, again and again. However, it is complicated to change that, as many large brands continue to make a lot of money with this business model. And their CEOs are under a lot of pressure from investors, who feel that sustainable is more complicated and more expensive.

SL: Despite these challenges, do you believe change is possible?

Goyeneche: I believe it is, maybe not from one day to the next, but if you have a clear vision you can go forward. We haven't invented anything, the technology to convert plastic bottles into polymer does not belong to us, it is open. But we do know which type of polymer makes which type of yarn, and we know the good producers around the world, and where to find the materials we need.

“We need companies that can strike a balance between sustainability and profitability.”

SL:Your claim is "There is no planet B®" Where did that come from?

Goyeneche: You know how it started? It was an accident. We went to Berlin to show our first collection in 2013, and when we arrived, the space allocated for presenting the clothes was the worst. It looked like a bathroom, and it had a column in the centre. We needed to do something, quick. On the plane to Berlin I had been reading about the concept of Plan B. So we wrote "There is no planet B®" outside, and people walking by stopped and took photos of it. The next day we registered it.

SL: You're a distinguished speaker at business schools. What's your message to the next generation of entrepreneurs?

Goyeneche: I tell them that you have to be brave and that you have to be innovative. The world doesn't need another generation of companies that operate like they did 50 years ago, but we need companies that can strike a balance between sustainability and profitability.