The space dedicated to the new factory is located on the second floor of this building, built in 1990, the first building with “curtain walls” offering the eye a smooth glass façade without any “hooks”. It will be dedicated more specifically to textile, linen and shoe companies to create a circular factory.
The ambition of the circular factory is to host various actors and activities, links in the textile production chain: textile design office, residence of committed designers, prototyping workshop or even small series production, medium series production line, sorting and preparation of secondary raw materials (second-hand clothes, unsold items) for upcycling or recycling at equal value. Eligible applications will be examined according to four criteria: environmental impact, social impact, quality of the economic project, performance and financial reliability of the project.
Fashion Green Hub already on the premises
The total surface area of the factory is 1,100 square metres, divided into four symmetrical lots and levels. One of the central lots is already occupied by a social economy structure in the TLC sector: Fashion Green Hub, an association from Roubaix that is well known to textile players and whose ambition is to develop an innovative and sustainable fashion and textile activity on French territory through collective work between companies and shared resources. It organises the Fashion Tech Days and Fashion Green Days and coordinates working groups and research-action involving its 300 members.
Fashion Green Hub plans to duplicate in Berlier the model of its first third place, the Plateau Fertile. It will train its members in circular practices in circular factories, host designers and young brands in residence and will also have a design and prototyping office.
This project is part of the country’s textile reindustrialisation process, which was reactivated during Covid season 1 and the mask shortage. This first containment had highlighted the critical importance of maintaining production capacities for certain essential goods, particularly textiles, on national territory, in the immediate vicinity of the populations. With this ambition, the City of Paris joins the pioneers of textile re-industrialisation in France, such as Le Slip Français and 1083, which mobilised strongly during the health crisis. In addition to these issues, changes in the legislative framework for the circular economy (AGEC and Climate & Resilience Law) are now pushing for the relocation of textile production activities to the centre of Paris.
Fashion United