Fili Pari: marble dust become fabric

Today we meet Fili Pari, the first fashion-tech startup to develop a collection of outerwear for women using the innovative material MARM \ MORE®

Waterproof, windproof and abrasion resistant, MARM \ MORE® is in fact a coating on fabric that uses the potential of marble to give natural colours while remaining soft and pleasant to the touch.

The Fili Pari project was born at the Polytechnic University of Milan and took shape in early 2020 when a great love for the territory and constant research for a balance between consumption and sustainable production pushed the co-founders of the brand to give their project the shape of a company ready to take off for a totally “green” adventure in the fashion world.

Today Fili Pari is a complete collection of minimal-style outerwear, created for the contemporary, strong and dynamic woman who is always looking for beauty and comfort. High-quality garments, but ethically produced.

We asked the Fili Pari Team some questions to get know the innovative spirit of this start-up even better:

Till now the fashion textile sector has been one of those that has had the greatest environmental impact. Fili Pari’s response to this is an entirely sustainable project. What were the fundamental stages of your journey?

For Fili Pari, sustainability has always been at the base of the project right from the start. Every day the fashion industry produces many more garments than the population needs, and for us the time had come to stop this loop and take action. Our start-up embraces the values of a circular economy, combining research and innovation to improve the well-being of our Planet and its people, throughout the entire life cycle of the product. For the co-founders Alice Zantedeschi and Francesca Pievani it was and still is important to pay attention to the resources our planet offers. From this ideal MARM \ MORE® was born: a patented fabric made from a combination of marble and recycled nylon or polyester that offers totally natural colours thanks to the type of marble powder used, which substitutes up to 50% of the synthetic elements in the coating. Fili Pari promotes the responsible use of our planet’s resources with the aim to optimize the consumption of material to guarantee as little waste as possible. Thanks to this zero waste philosophy, even the waste from cutting the garments when making them becomes an opportunity and finds new life in small accessories. We firmly believe in the philosophy of re-use and recycle, for this reason we recover and collect the Fili Pari garments to transform them into new products, slowing down the negative impact that the textile sector has on our environment.

  Your encounter with marble …

Starting from the origins, Fili Pari was born at the Polytechnic University of Milan, where both founders were studying for a Master Degree in Design for the Fashion system. The project originated from the desire to create a link between the Italian territory and the fashion industry.  Marble is a natural element, the excellence of “Made in Italy” that communicates the territory, its history and its evolutions and moves the strong but little known industrial stone district. Used in art, architecture and design, Marble is an element that characterizes our peninsula, but has never been used in the textile sector, if not as inspiration, recreating its veins through printing.

Here the challenge began, to create a link between the marble district and the textile sector, retrieving the waste from the former and transforming it into an opportunity with the circular economy in mind.

Your garments are not only sustainable, but also high-performance like technical garments.

What makes this combination possible?

Thanks to cutting-edge technologies for the exploitation of marble powder, the founders managed to patent MARM \ MORE®, a material that recovers products and by-products of the marble industry, combining technical performance with unique aesthetic effects. Marble is pulverised very finely, added to a recipe that is part liquid and then it dries into a thin microfilm, which is matched with a fabric. These microfilms usually have a base that is 100% synthetic and are used to make the fabric waterproof. Thanks to MARM \ MORE®, up to 50% of the synthetic component can be replaced by recycled marble powder, reducing the impact of the garment itself. In addition, all our materials have completely natural colouring or aesthetic effects, thanks to the type of marble used, removing all the chemical colouring agents. Thus, we have combined performance, sustainability and aesthetics.

Fili Pari https://filipari.com/it/

MARM \ MORE® https://www.marmmorefabrics.com/

Author: Maria Chiara Bocciolini