GREEN CARPET FASHION AWARDS
Sustainable Producer 2018
September 25 2018
GREEN CARPET FASHION AWARDS
Bonotto wins the Sustainable Producer prize at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards 2018 hosted by Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana in cooperation with Eco-Age.
The event took place yesterday, Sunday 23 September, at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, at the end of Milan Fashion Week. The GCFA, Italy, celebrates the achievements in sustainability within the luxury and fashion industries.
The coveted award, in the sustainable producer category, was presented by actors Stefania Rocca and Hu Bing to Giovanni Bonotto, Creative Director of BONOTTO who was dressed in Zegna for the occasion, with a suit designed by Alessandro Sartori.
BONOTTO is a fourth-generation textile manufacturing company founded in 1912 in order to produce, initially, straw hats. It was purchased by the Ermenegildo Zegna group in 2016. Fifty years later this company’s creative and manufacturing expertise was transformed into a little jewel of textile productivity that has grown in parallel with the Italian fashion system. Today, over 200 master artists have dedicated themselves to the creation of incredible artistic textiles that are chosen by the most significant and interesting fashion houses around the world.
Giovanni Bonotto has become an ambassador for a new way of thinking and of producing, which brings him back almost to the origins of textile production. He calls this concept the “Slow Factory”.
This manufacturing facility, which originated in Vicenza, is also home to the FONDAZIONE BONOTTO that, from the early 1970s to date, has collected a vast number of testimonies, over 15,000 documents, including works, audio documentation, videos, manifestoes, books, magazines, and artist’s editions by Fluxus and select Video Artists. Within the context of the slow factory artists like Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and John Cage have lived and created. Today, these works are exhibited within the same production facilities used primarily by the company’s textile artisans.
All of these contaminations have resulted in the creation of a “slow fabric” that, during Milan Fashion Week, has also become a “Plastic Garden”, the 70 meters of tapestry that bedeck the eight columns of Teatro Alla Scala were created with Gardening Bonotto fabric: made from a fiber produced with more than 300kg of recycled plastic obtained from ordinary plastic bottles.
Gardening Bonotto fabrics were also used to create the clothing worn by Stefania Rocca and Dragana Capasa as they walked the green carpet.
“The fabrics highlight a topic addressed by Joseph Beuys, – states Giovanni Bonotto – one of the 20th century’s greatest artists and the first to investigate the relationship between Man and Nature, and they are created with ‘Gardening Bonotto’ fiber, made of recycled polyester recovered from plastic bottles. The Jumbo Jacquard weaving technique is used, this is done on a special Fabbrica Lenta Bonotto mechanical loom, and the fabric is made up of 20,000 threads per meter and it was all handmade by master weavers who worked for 200 hours,” concludes Bonotto.
The clothing was designed by Ennio Capasa, who remarks: "I designed two dresses featuring very clean lines; one for Stefania Rocca and the other for my wife Dragana, to show the fabrics developed with Giovanni Bonotto to their best advantage. These fabrics carry forward some thoughts that the great artist Joseph Beuys had regarding sustainability. I chose white and sky blue, symbols of air and water, the essence of life.”
The event took place yesterday, Sunday 23 September, at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, at the end of Milan Fashion Week. The GCFA, Italy, celebrates the achievements in sustainability within the luxury and fashion industries.
The coveted award, in the sustainable producer category, was presented by actors Stefania Rocca and Hu Bing to Giovanni Bonotto, Creative Director of BONOTTO who was dressed in Zegna for the occasion, with a suit designed by Alessandro Sartori.
BONOTTO is a fourth-generation textile manufacturing company founded in 1912 in order to produce, initially, straw hats. It was purchased by the Ermenegildo Zegna group in 2016. Fifty years later this company’s creative and manufacturing expertise was transformed into a little jewel of textile productivity that has grown in parallel with the Italian fashion system. Today, over 200 master artists have dedicated themselves to the creation of incredible artistic textiles that are chosen by the most significant and interesting fashion houses around the world.
Giovanni Bonotto has become an ambassador for a new way of thinking and of producing, which brings him back almost to the origins of textile production. He calls this concept the “Slow Factory”.
This manufacturing facility, which originated in Vicenza, is also home to the FONDAZIONE BONOTTO that, from the early 1970s to date, has collected a vast number of testimonies, over 15,000 documents, including works, audio documentation, videos, manifestoes, books, magazines, and artist’s editions by Fluxus and select Video Artists. Within the context of the slow factory artists like Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and John Cage have lived and created. Today, these works are exhibited within the same production facilities used primarily by the company’s textile artisans.
All of these contaminations have resulted in the creation of a “slow fabric” that, during Milan Fashion Week, has also become a “Plastic Garden”, the 70 meters of tapestry that bedeck the eight columns of Teatro Alla Scala were created with Gardening Bonotto fabric: made from a fiber produced with more than 300kg of recycled plastic obtained from ordinary plastic bottles.
Gardening Bonotto fabrics were also used to create the clothing worn by Stefania Rocca and Dragana Capasa as they walked the green carpet.
“The fabrics highlight a topic addressed by Joseph Beuys, – states Giovanni Bonotto – one of the 20th century’s greatest artists and the first to investigate the relationship between Man and Nature, and they are created with ‘Gardening Bonotto’ fiber, made of recycled polyester recovered from plastic bottles. The Jumbo Jacquard weaving technique is used, this is done on a special Fabbrica Lenta Bonotto mechanical loom, and the fabric is made up of 20,000 threads per meter and it was all handmade by master weavers who worked for 200 hours,” concludes Bonotto.
The clothing was designed by Ennio Capasa, who remarks: "I designed two dresses featuring very clean lines; one for Stefania Rocca and the other for my wife Dragana, to show the fabrics developed with Giovanni Bonotto to their best advantage. These fabrics carry forward some thoughts that the great artist Joseph Beuys had regarding sustainability. I chose white and sky blue, symbols of air and water, the essence of life.”
