Chanel reveals new plans to develop its recycling strategies.

Chanel has revealed that they have created a new third entity to their business portfolio, Nevold, which will focus on the recycling of garments, threads and offcuts when manufacturing their items. With the ever-lasting dilema of unsustainability within fashion retail, Chanel’s plans to enter the recycled garment space are unsurprising, as the majority of Chanel’s resources include raw materials - such as wool, silk, cotton, cashmere and leather - all of which are under strain. This plan is a direct response to the damaging ‘end of life’ process that occurs when products don’t selling; going to wasteland and being destroyed.

The name ‘Nevold’ is a mash of the words ‘Never Old’, and the main focus of which will be on reusing the unused tweed and leather to manufacture luxury products that still meet the high criteria which is expected from Chanels price point. Nevold focuses more on the supply chain process, and Chanel want this new venture to remain competely seperate to its existing luxury brand identity, not transforming the face of Chanel into a sustainability mission, but instead to make impactful changes behind the scenes to combat internal issues that will inevitably present challenges in the future.

Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Fashion at Chanel, stated that “If we want to continue to exist and to do what we are doing, we have to anticipate and to see how we can rethink this idea of materials and raw materials” and that they wanted to rethink their business strategy, not for the “next season, but for the next generation“.

At its core, the aim of Nevold is to increase Chanels resilience to the increased complexity of resource acquisition, preserving the brands ability to create and sell its products for lifetimes to come. Other luxury fashion houses have been doing this for some time, with Louis Vuitton claiming in 2022 that ‘80% of their raw materials are either certified or recycled’. Another example is Sézane, which by nature is a sustainable company that uses appropriate production methods and raw materials to qualify them as B Corp certified.