Scotch & Soda X Veloretti and other innovative fashion crossovers
Fellow Amsterdam brands release co-branded bikes alongside new rainwear collection, but this partnership is not alone in pushing fashion forward by drawing from other sectors in the city. Read about more crossovers between fashion and other industries.
Amsterdam innovators adding value with cooperation across sectors
Veloretti is releasing a series of bikes accompanying the new rainwear collection from fellow Amsterdammers Scotch & Soda, both celebrating the city’s unique cycling culture with co-branded products built to last. The collaboration emerges from a diverse fashion industry in Amsterdam with a tradition of innovation through partnership with other sectors – not only through co-branding but also fashion applications of AI, 3D digital tech, recycling and repair. And they’re not the only example of Amsterdam fashion crossovers innovating with help from different industries.
Adding value with co-branding
Scotch & Soda's new rainwear collection, Amsterdam Proof, returns to a key practicality for local residents: rain. The collection covers unisex waterproof garments from raincoats and ponchos to trousers and bucket hats. Meanwhile, Veloretti's new range of city and electric bicycles features Scotch & Soda branding and colour schemes to complement the Amsterdam Proof rainwear.
As every cyclist in Amsterdam knows, biking in the city is such a way of life that it’s taken for granted as the primary means of getting around – whatever the weather. Veloretti’s accompanying bicycle range, therefore, provides the wheels, while Scotch & Soda’s collection stops you getting wet while you bike.
Startups employing tech to revolutionise digital fashion
But this partnership is by no means the only such productive interaction between Amsterdam fashion and other sectors in the city. In particular, many fashion startups are employing knowledge and tools from the tech industry.
- Lalaland is an award-winning startup that employs AI to increase diversity in e-commerce. Using neural networks, it generates hyper-realistic images of artificial human models, tailored to suit any size, body shape, hairstyle, identity, pose or even mood. As a result, it fosters an increasingly diverse set of images online, in which anyone can see themselves reflected as they shop.
- The Fabricant, meanwhile, is using 3D modelling to take digital fashion to another level entirely. Rather than generating approximations of physical garments existing in the real world, its tech makes an art of virtual clothing itself. With zero waste in mind, the ‘digital fashion house’ works towards a digital-only world of fashion and couture.
Amsterdam fashion’s recycling and repair initiatives
Similarly focused on sustainability, a number of startups in Amsterdam are getting their hands dirty with recycling and upcycling solutions to reduce fashion waste.
- MAIUM takes rainwear one step further with a range of waterproof clothing made from recycled plastic. By its own estimate, it will recycle over one million plastic bottles in its raincoats in 2022 alone, and hopes to grow to five million per year. With a similarly forward-thinking strategy designed to avoid overproduction or deadstock, this label has sustainability sewn into its fabric.
- Focused on repair and reuse, the United Repair Centre in Amsterdam results from a collaboration between local textile-based creative agency Makers Unite and global brand Patagonia – by now a byword for large-scale sustainable fashion. The Centre plans to repair 300,000 items of clothing per year for various brands: not only including Patagonia but also Scotch & Soda.
A city breeding innovation and sustainability through partnership
Such innovations in fashion are nothing new in Amsterdam, home to a thriving sustainable fashion network. From sustainable fashion labels to a variety of initiatives working towards reducing the industry’s environmental impact, progress towards becoming cleaner and greener is almost taken for granted in Amsterdam’s fashion sector – as well as its wider startup ecosystem.
