Boldly sculpted eyeliner, tightly combed back hair, dressed in heavy organic cotton fabrics from Uganda in a soft natural tone, black and white canvas and light blue poplin. This is how designer Rebekka Ruétz presents her ‘Black Sun’ collection on the catwalk at Fashion Week 2024 in Berlin.
The designer is known for her unconventional, extravagant creations and her sustainable slow-fashion approach. At the end of 2023, she became aware of the Cotonea brand – which is backed by the Swabian company Elmer & Zweifel. A traditional company that was founded in 1855 as a cotton spinning mill in Bempflingen, 30 kilometres from Stuttgart.
Peaceful Bempflingen: just over 3,400 inhabitants, one primary school and a railway station that was converted back into a stop by the German Federal Railway. You would hardly expect to find a company here that has been successfully processing cotton for almost 170 years and is undoubtedly regarded as an organic textile pioneer in Germany.
Cotonea has been involved in organic cotton cultivation since the 1990s. Cotonea helped establish the Gulu Agricultural Development Company (GADC) and an organic cotton co-operative in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. It has been a consultant and reliable buyer of Ugandan and Kyrgyz organic cotton for many years. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, but the cultivation of raw materials is only the starting point for the production of any cotton textile. It becomes even more astonishing when Roland Stelzer, the company’s full-bearded managing director, talks enthusiastically in Swabian singsong about all the stages along his production chain. He talks enthusiastically about his personal relationship with his partners: from ginning and fibre production, yarn spinning, yarn finishing, surface formation, weaving and knitting. He knows all his supply chain partners personally. This closeness and transparency is almost unheard of in the textile industry – even if the opposite is always gladly and boldly claimed.
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Kollektion „Black Sun“ der Designerin Rebekka Ruétz auf der Fashion Week 2024 in Berlin. / ‘Black Sun’ collection by designer Rebekka Ruétz at Fashion Week 2024 in Berlin.
Cotonea was the perfect partner for Rebekka Ruétz. The designer is committed to social responsibility, compliance with high quality and environmental standards and therefore responsible fashion. She refrains from using real leather, real fur and real silk in her collections. In her collaboration with the American sneakers label Skechers, she has made waist belts, bags, corsages and cuffs from recycled sneakers.
The committed designer is also a perfect partner for Cotonea. Fashion and clothing play an important role for the company and, according to its own statements, offers designers what is probably the world’s largest range of certified organic cotton fabrics. Not to mention the opportunity to develop fabrics together.
Author: Stefan Rennicke
Website: https://www.rebekkaruetz.com
Website: https://www.cotonea.de
Photos © Rebekka Ruétz / Getty Images