The textiles have the peotic power of tracing time. The changes in the colours make the ageing process visible and make transience a subject of discussion – spiritual as well as material. Seeing the textiles develop creates an emotional relationship, as both the owners and the objects age side by side. The textiles thus reflect and make transience visible. In doing so, they raise questions about physical obsolescence. Instead of connoting these aspects negatively, SLOW PATTERNS encourages us to value the products over their entire lifespan and to accept and celebrate their changes as well as our own.

A sign against fast fashion: the low lightfastness of natural materials is often seen as a shortcoming. Meyers & Fügmann, on the other hand, show with their project how aesthetically natural colours change and that beauty can lie in this process. SLOW PATTERNS thus becomes a plea for the dignity and vitality of natural colours.

When knitting meets 3D software, there are several advantages. Designs can be improved and adjusted at an early stage in terms of design process or colouring to efficiently create virtually producible and realistic prototypes. In addition, the combination of knitwear and digital visualisation offers enormous savings potential: the waste of materials, resources and transport can thus be reduced. Furthermore, the fits for sampling and production are more accurate through Virtual Knitting, which is why, ideally, fewer samples need to be produced. Last but not least – the method significantly shortens the time from design to market and enables early commercial validation of the products, thus offering a win-win in the aspects of economic and ecological sustainabilit.

As part of the BIOTEXFUTURE Germany innovation space, leading research teams from the textile sector and industry are driving forward the development of bio-based textiles. Their aim is to accelerate the structural change towards a bioeconomy in this sector. On top of that, the ambition is also to find alternatives and solutions for some of the most important challenges currently facing the textile industry – from impregnation and dyes to elastane alternatives as well as textile recycling and microplastic filling in sports fields. On the research side, one of the world’s leading Institutes for Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University (ITA) is responsible together with the Chair of Technology and Organisational Sociology (STO). For the industry, this part is taken over by the global company adidas AG.