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Fashion
KTH Innovation highlighted groundbreaking solutions to inspire the industry
The first edition of Sustainable Fashion Day attracted several hundreds of visitors.
By JOHAN MAGNUSSON
10 May 2022

As part of KTH Royal Institute of Technology, KTH Innovation support students, researchers, and employees who want to develop an idea or create an impact with their research.

— We meet around 350 new teams with ideas per year and help them figure out all the steps from an idea in your head or a result in your lab until you reach the market. We have developed methods and processes that are used worldwide, like the KTH Innovation Readiness Level Model which helps teams measure their progress. We have helped to start over 300 companies that are out making an impact on the market today, says Lisa Bäckman, marketing and communications manager.

During a full day in April, called Sustainable Fashion Day, KTH Innovation and the partner H&M Foundation wanted more people at the university and outside to connect engineering with fashion and inspire more innovative solutions that can contribute to a much-needed shift in the fashion industry.

— We organized a day of events and activities with the aim of highlighting new solutions that can help the fashion industry become more sustainable and also contribute to a shift in consumer behaviour. In the Fashiontech Expo, visitors could see innovations in fashion and cosmetics, like custom-made lipsticks by Ellure — a startup founded by KTH students — learn more about Renewcell’s revolutionary recycling process (pictured above) or scan their feet with Volumental’s scanner. Visitors could also see the five new winners of the Global Change Award and meet one of them, Biorestore, as well as Dimpora, a winner from 2019, says Bäckman, continuing,

— We also hosted several events, including a fashion show and the inspirational event Fashiontech Ideation Evening, where people from KTH got down to business to start coming up with their own ideas. Apart from highlighting our work to create a more sustainable fashion industry, we also wanted to inspire our students, researchers and employees to develop their own ideas that can contribute to a more sustainable fashion future. The event was open to everyone and the reception was really positive — we had several hundred visitors during the day and the companies received great feedback.

Biorestore at Sustainable Fashion Day.

Throughout the years, how have you worked with fashion-tech and innovation?

— We have supported ideas that were to become companies, like Renewcell and Volumental and we also support new ideas in all areas you can imagine. A few companies to keep track of would be Klimato, which calculates CO2 emissions from food, recently at COP26 in Glasgow. Also worth mentioning is porkchop, aiming to become ’the DHL of space’, or Akira Science which aims to change the way we perform reconstructive surgery for breast cancer survivors, with biodegradable implants — a few years away from the market but exciting nonetheless. Ellure is founded by a team of our students who wanted to reduce overproduction in the cosmetics industry. Their solution is make-up on demand. Highly personalized, and with instant delivery through their lipstick printer, which can print over 10,000 colours, Bäckman concludes.