With The Collection of Tomorrow, norwegian leisure wear company Bergans wants to challenge whole concept of textile production. Yes, the collection is really tiny. No, they claim they do not make money on it. Nevertheless, Bergans Future Lab – a collab between norwegian Bergans, Finnish Spinnova and the scottish textile company Halley Stevensons – is the Norwegian company’s most important and ambitious project yet. Together they embark on a journey towards making clothes and personal items more sustainable through a circlar economy model. Sports wear and leisure wear have been especially targeted as non-environmental friendly because of all chemicals micro plastic that’s being used in the production.
With this collection Bergans wants to challenge both the way of producing but also our concepts of ownership of personal items. On their website they write: “Just a few decades ago, owning many things was considered a good thing. Today it does not give the same status. Things are about to change. It is a fact that our planet does not cope with the over-consumption that we in the Western world have maintained over the last 50 years or so. We are simply running out of resources. Ideally, we should probably stop consuming resources at all, but that would not be a good solution either. After all, the commercial structures are the mainstays of our society. We have to think new.”
“When you buy a The Collection of Tomorrow anorak, it is important that you understand what you actually are buying. Yes, you will own a really nice product, but you will also own a small part of the total amount of Spinnova material that exists in the world. The value of the product is therefore divided in two; one part is the value of the work done to shape the material into a garment, and the other part is the value of the material itself. Right now, the material is shaped like an anorak. But in the future, it can be recycled and become a completely different product”. And – here’s the clue: when the product is no longer of use to you, the material still has its value.
“It’s a microscopic step for leisure wear, but a giant leap towards a sustainable textile production model” says Bjørnhild Hoveid Steingrimsen i Bergans. If you want to know more, you can read about the concept and see more of the collection here.
