Really by Kvadrat for Tommy Hilfiger 2022 / 2023
Situation: on the Tommy Hilfiger Sportswear 2022 concept, I was involved from the design phase, looking at recycled and recyclable materials for fixtures and cladding. We selected Really, a company partly owned by Kvadrat, whose Textile Board is made from end-of-life textiles, largely hospitality industry linens, denim and wool, pressed into a high-density board. Applied as cladding over wooden fixture frames, it gave a terrazzo-like finish in blue and white that looked genuinely striking.
My role: once the material was chosen, I assessed its life cycle and recyclability, how it could be collected and recycled again at end of life, against our compliance requirements.
What I found: most European stores require fire retardation ratings, and this hadn’t been tested yet for our use case. I pushed for proper assessment before approval rather than assuming it would pass. It came back rated C, below what we required.
The real insight: even if it had passed, treating the board with fire retardant would have made it unrecyclable at end of life, which would have undone the entire point of choosing a recycled material.
Outcome: we didn’t proceed with it for that reason, and I was glad to have caught it, because the alternative was approving a beautiful material that solved one sustainability problem while quietly creating a worse one, and a compliance risk alongside it.