Epson has partnered for 3 years with renowned Japanese fashion designer Yuima Nakazato and his eponymous YUIMA NAKAZATO brand at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week Spring - Summer 2023 to unveil creations that are both stunning and sustainable.

In addition to utilizing Epson's digital textile printing to reproduce his unique and creative worldview, YUIMA NAKAZATO realized some of its creations with the help of a new, more sustainable and potentially industry-transforming textile production process. Epson's dry fiber technology, which is already used commercially to recycle office paper and which requires virtually no water, has been adapted to produce printable non-woven fabric from used garments. Both Epson and YUIMA NAKAZATO are indeed keen to raise awareness of the water and material waste associated with excess production.

The new fabric production process was used in the creation of items for the first time during the latter's runway show at the Palais de Tokyo on January 25, 2023.

The fabric taken to create the latest YUIMA NAKAZATO fashion line was derived from material from used garments sourced from Africa, the destination for many discarded garments from elsewhere in the world. Nakazato visited Kenya where he collected around 150 kg of waste garment material destined for the "clothes mountain" of discarded textiles he encountered there. Epson then applied its dry fiber process to produce over 50 metres of new re-fiberised non-woven fabric, some of which was used for printing with pigment inks with Epson's Monna Lisa digital printing technology.¹ ²

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¹ Digital textile printing using pigment inks offers a far more sustainable approach to the fabric production process. compared with traditional analog methods. In addition to pigment inks requiring significantly less water, the digital process requires far fewer stages and is less complex. Unlike analog it requires no plate production, washing or storage, results in little disposal of used inks, and allows on-demand production that contributes to less waste.

² Epson's Monna Lisa digital Direct-to-Fabric printers use less water compared with analog methods. Genesta RE-N Reactive inks (except Grey RE-N) and Genesta PG-2 Pigment inks have been GOTS approved by ECOCERT.

© Luca Tombolini x Yuima Nakazato