Remember, Le Boudoir Numérique presented you the startup De Rigueur in 2019, thanks to the interview of its artistic director, Cyril Bertrand, with whom we talked about fashion tech (read here). Since then, the French company, created in 2014 by Adrien Deslous-Paoli, has grown well and now has several entities gathered in the same group: .Tech (pronounced dot tech), .Green, .Smart and .Ventures, a studio for digital startups, launched last April. At a time when the European Union unveiled its strategy for sustainable and circular textiles on March 30 and when the last part of the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just delivered, on April 4, its solutions to reduce our impact on global warming, let's focus on the .Green entity, with Anna Dechoux, its technical manager for sustainable development, and Alessandro Ferrero, head of international sales at De Rigueur.Group.

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique: Launched in September 2020, .Green is the entity dedicated to sustainable development of De Rigueur.Group, an innovation accelerator for fashion and luxury brands. What role should technology play for a more sustainable fashion?

Anna Dechoux, sustainable development technical manager at De Rigueur.Green: For us, sustainable development is a goal, not an identity in itself. And technology is a tool to achieve this end. Other tools exist, such as slow tech, for example. But in the specific case of fashion, it is necessary to take into consideration and fully understand the very nature of the textile sector which, far from being slow, has become in recent years an industrialized, relocated and globalized giant, a player more than ever technological. To accelerate its sustainable transition, fashion must adapt by using its own tools, technological tools.

What tech tools do you use at .Green?

Anna Dechoux: A fundamental tool when talking about the environment is life cycle analysis (LCA). This method consists in evaluating the environmental impacts that will result from the different stages of a product's life, from its raw materials, to its production, distribution, use, until the end of its life. Climate change, water or fossil fuel consumption… there are many environmental impact indicators, each showing specific pollution. LCA is a fundamental tool because it reminds us that any occupation, any production entails a cost, negative or positive. The purpose of the analysis is to enable a company to move towards neutrality or a positive impact, by implementing relevant actions at the different stages of the life cycle.

Alessandro Ferrero, head of international sales at De Rigueur.Group: For example, the development of innovative anti-stain and anti-odor fabrics seems to me to be an interesting way of minimizing our environmental impact. If clothes get less stained, you have to wash them less and you use less water.

Anna Dechoux: The impact of detergents can indeed be very significant, depending on the materials used. Moreover, in addition to having clothes that are easier to care for and last longer, if they were better adapted to our morphology, we could produce less and waste less. I am thinking in particular of the possibilities offered by 3D scanning, which makes it possible to create made-to-measure clothing that fully meets our expectations. Just by using your smartphone, you can scan the morphology of your body, so much data that is used by a company like Unspun, for example, to make custom jeans, like a real tailor would. The 3D scan is also practical for online shopping platforms, where algorithms suggest a size or a cut, depending on the data collected.

Since you are talking here about artificial intelligence, what is the use of this technological tool for a more sustainable fashion?

Alessandro Ferrero: Artificial intelligence is involved at all levels of the fashion supply chain. Upstream, from product design to distribution, from forecasting to quality, for example. In fact, artificial intelligence makes it possible to monitor all the stages of the supply chain, in the broad sense. One of the major issues in fashion, whether mass market or luxury, is the management of unsold items. How to have accurate forecasts so as not to overproduce? Before, forecasts were made on the basis of sales from previous seasons and data obtained from retailers and consumers. But the margin of error was very large. Thanks to artificial intelligence and real-time data collection, forecasts are more accurate, production planning more judicious, inventory management more reasoned. We avoid overproduction, all the items thrown away and burned, all those things that are not recoverable because often made of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable materials.

Anna Dechoux: Artificial intelligence also makes it possible to minimize losses, for example, when it is integrated into production machines, in order to identify, at the source, any defects in textiles or leather. The images captured by cameras installed on the production line are analyzed by artificial intelligence trained to recognize material defects, thus limiting the risk of producing items that would end up unsold. Same for computer-aided design. Instead of creating prototypes manually, with fabrics already produced, CAD makes it possible to create, virtually, 3D models, that allows to identify problems with size, cut, drape, etc. And that's impressive because if a prototype that will become a large series of articles is poorly thought out, if it has the slightest little defect, behind it, it's thousands of units that will not be chosen in store, facing competition from better offers. This type of tool makes it possible to reduce errors, waste, in short, to produce as accurately as possible.

In your opinion, is fashion moving fast enough to implement its ecological transition?

Faced with the urgency to act for the planet, one can always consider that things are not going fast enough. But we do not pass punitive judgment on fashion brands, some of which are moving faster than others, in a sector where change is sometimes slow to take hold. In fact, our mission is precisely to support and facilitate the acceleration of companies that do not know how to accomplish this transition or that consider that they are working too slowly. The fact is that we all have to reach a certain rate of emissions, we all run towards the same finish line, towards the same end of sustainability. So I would not say that it is fashion that is not going fast enough. It's the world.