Peru, birthplace of alpaca and organic cotton, promotes sustainable fashion
Monica Martínez
Lima, Oct 5 (EFE).- With two of the finest fibers in the textile industry, alpaca fleece and organic cotton, Peru is promoting sustainable fashion this year at the first virtual edition of the Peru Moda and Peru Moda Deco 2020 trade fair with more than 300 companies in search of the most exclusive markets around the world.
As in previous years, Peruvian fashion designers have come together to show their latest collections to export to markets that appreciate original garments using high-quality materials.
In the same way, artisan workshops present jewelry, wood and ceramic ornaments, furniture and textiles in the section dedicated to gifts and home decor.
For the first time, both fairs will be held online throughout October on a B2B platform for Peruvian clothing and decoration exports, under the slogan ‘Feel & Live Sustainable’.
SOFT AND WARM
“The time has arrived not only to live sustainably, but to feel the sustainability that many of our products have, which are based on both cotton and alpaca, but also in decorations and gifts, such as home textiles, toys and everything that is home decor,” the director of Promperu Export Promotion, Mario Ocharán told Efe.
Peru Moda and Moda Deco inlcude business meetings, the Textile Industry Sustainability and Innovation award and the Peru Moda Feel & Live Sustainable forum with experts from Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Colombia, the United States and Argentina, who will talk on the fashion revolution, the state of the post-pandemic industry, new consumer drivers, the future of handcrafted goods and luxury fashion.
Ocharán pointed out that the Peruvian textile export industry is focused on “low volume, high quality and high variety” production, characteristics that very few countries have.
“We are well placed in this new world of global trends, which has already been going for about seven or eight years,” he said.
POST-PANDEMIC EXPORTS
Peru currently has 1,200 textile companies that exported a total of 1,700 million dollars in 2019, of which 400 companies have chosen sustainability.
Expectations for this year’s fair “were conservative, but I believe that we have achieved the goal, we are talking about approximately 360 exporting companies, connected with (between) 320 to 340 importers from 35 countries around the world,” the Promperú director said.
In 2019, Peru Moda generated 120 million dollars in business and this year with the pandemic and in virtual mode, organizers expect the 27 business meetings will result in agreements worth 60 million dollars.
The country’s textile exports have fallen this year to 500 million dollars, although the 1,200 companies that sold some 600 products to 99 markets in 2019 remain afloat.
FINE FABRIC BRANDS
One of the brands that will participate in the 2020 virtual fair is women’s fashion firm Mozh Mozh by designer Mozhdeh Matin, a company that is focused on exports and has attended the New York and Paris Fashion Weeks since it was founded in 2015.
“It is a brand in which we develop products made with artisans from different communities in Peru. We work only with Peruvian raw materials, cotton, alpaca, sometimes sheep wool, and recently we introduced a new material from an Amazon rubber tree,” Matin said in an interview with Efe.
The designer explained that her strength is “the design of the fabric, we do not buy the material, everything comes from a thread, which becomes a loom or a crochet fabric” in multiple colors.
Matin said that she had found Japan to be one of the countries that most appreciates her work while announcing her 2021 spring-summer collection called Infinitive Love, designed 100% in pima cotton during the months of the pandemic.
