Chanel's Nevold: A Debut With Circular Fashion

The iconic fashion house Chanel has launched a new independent company called Nevold, born to produce, research and develop circular materials. It marks a sustainable and strategic turning point for the luxury House.

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Nevold, which is separate from but launched by Chanel, is led by Sophie Brocart—former CEO of luxury brand Patou—who joined Chanel in January. Chanel’s goal with this company is to scale up the use of circular textiles both for its own collections and for third parties.

The development for Nevold included an initial investment between 50 million and 80 million euros, according to U.S. media WWD. For this project, Nevold will involve Chanel’s current principle investments: L’Atelier des Matières, Chanel’s in-house recycling lab which transforms luxury waste into reusable materials, the Filatures du Parc family-owned spinning mill business, and the French-leather recycling specialist Authentic Material.

This company is a key element in addressing the scarcity of top-grade fibres with traceable origins, the issue of waste within the fashion industry, and luxury fashion waste. Not only this, its aim to enter the world of circular fashion and produce new materials is remarkable.

“We started by asking ourselves what happens to the materials that don’t make it into a final product, or those that reach the end of their first life,” Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel and Chanel SAS, tells this to Vogue Business.

“At Chanel, we didn’t destroy unsold products. But we also didn’t yet have a real system to understand their full potential. Nevold is that system.” — Pavlovsky to Vogue Business.

Nevold, then, is the entity that was created to become Chanel’s third industrial pillar. With it, Chanel will achieve its goal of developing recycled materials at an industrial scale.

In addition to working under a B2B (business-to-business) model, Nevold will also be available to other brands in addition to Chanel. In fact, it has started collaborating with the French sports chain Decathlon. To address other exciting news, Nevold already has two exciting new innovations ready to view in the fashion market: a yarn made from a blend of virgin and recycled fibres, and a recycled leather material that is already integrated into 30% of Chanel bags and 50% of Chanel shoes.