The perfect tights that biodegrade in record time.
Written by Marie Bouhier, MA Fashion Design Management, London College of Fashion
My name is Marie I am 26 years old and French. I arrived in London in 2017 for My masters in Fashion Design Management at the London College of Fashion.
Before London, I had the chance to live in a number of different countries. An amazing opportunity to discover people from other nationalities and open myself to other cultures.
I always had an appetite to study fashion and live in a fashion capital such as London. This explains why after my bachelor’s in administration and an eight months job experience in an advertising agency in Chile, I decided to move to London.
My year at the London College of Fashion was super intense, yet amazing. I gained a lot of knowledge in an industry I knew little about, but was always fascinated by. The course helped me understand impacts the fashion industry has on both the environment and its workers. Although I was somewhat aware of these issues, the truth is that I was far away from the reality.
How can the creative industry produce such amazing pieces of work, while still considering the impact it has on the world the same time?
These studies enabled me to learn how to use my creative skills to make positive changes. I also completely changed my fashion consumption habits. For my class 'Design Thinking', we had to develop a solution to an issue of our choice that we found worth fighting for in the fashion industry. This is when I decided to tackle the waste issue surrounding tights. From September to May they are my go to under garment, but having to throw them away on average after about two uses was a real frustration.
Further research found that traditional tights are requiring anywhere from 40 to 100 years to decompose. Each year, 2 billion pairs of tights are produced, worn once and discarded. And unfortunately, it is not yet possible to produce tights out of old ones, because the technology to separate nylon from elastane does not exist given their similar chemical structure.
From this, I began to understood that to simply use recycled yarns was not a satisfactory enough and not a long-term solution to fix tights' adverse impact on the environment. This is not to say I am against recycled yarns - as it's clear they still help to prevent the use of raw materials. But to tackle the waste issue I started to look at biodegradability as an alternative, which seemed a great solution to begin improving tights waste environmental impacts.
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After this project, my research was stored away in a drawer, and then one year later, in May 2019, I met Sophie, who was planning on creating a sustainable tights brand. Sophie lacked some of the knowledge surrounding tights that I had gained when conducting the research during my masters. And if by magic, Sophie became my co-founder and Billi London was formed. The world’s first enhanced biodegradable tights decomposing in less than 5 year in landfill versus traditional tights requiring over 40 years.
We are proud to say that we have invented a new generation of tights! Our main ambition is to create a movement and a new norm for the tights sector.
We are working with a yarn supplier able to apply an enhanced biodegradability formula to nylon without losing its features and quality. Its special composition, under anaerobic landfill conditions will make it easier for bacteria to reach and digest the discarded tights, thus accelerating its biodegradation process.
We also want women to fall in love with tights again, and by extension their legs and themselves. Tights are such a unique and very often forgotten piece of an outfit, Billi London’s mission is to inspire women and show them how fashion tights can become an iconic part of their wardrobe and an essential item.
Sensuality and playfulness are at the heart of our tight designs, giving women the confidence to stand out, making a bold statement with their outfit safe in the knowledge that to do so they don’t have to compromise on sustainability for quality designs.
Billi London’s tights will be available via a bi-monthly subscription model, delivering beautifully curated boxes directly to our consumer’s door as well and as one-off purchased. Each box will contain one classic Billi tight (a plain tight) and one fashion Billi tight.
People can pre-order our tights on our crowdfunding platform until the 14 June 2020 with a limited discount here.
Email: info@billi-london.com
Website: billi-london.com
Social: @billi_ldn