Since its beginnings, Hast has established a beautiful and solid relationship with Albini, a historic Italian house specialized in the manufacture of fabrics. It is with Albini fabrics that some of the shirts presented in our successive collections are made.
Founded in 1876, Albini and its various workshops are located around the aptly named Albino, a small town in Lombardy, nestled in a basin, where the Alps reveal their last peaks. From the balconies, one can admire a majestic mountain belt, standing guard, silent. In Albino, the houses have pastel walls and there are as many cafes as convents in old stones and with gilded edges inside which pretty Madonnas are celebrated.
In addition to other sites in southern Italy and abroad, the Albini company manages its spinning and finishing activities here, as well as the inspection of its finished products, which are made of cotton, but also linen and lyocell, a new fibre made from eucalyptus. In total, Albini produces some fourteen million metres of fabric each year. We filmed the behind the scenes of this factory in order to present it to you in detail in 2017: Watch the video .
But for several days now, in these places where the machines usually pull the thread and spin the spools at full speed in a happy din, we find only silence or almost.
The Coronavirus came along and forced everything to stop, to close. Lockdown required. It must be said that Albino is located not far from the Italian epicenter of the virus. The city even made headlines after Russian army soldiers dressed in suits that could have been diving suits were called to the rescue to thoroughly disinfect a retirement home where 35 people died after being infected with the virus. A few days ago, we reached Toni, the representative in France of the Albini house, by phone to ask him to explain to us the various consequences of the crisis on the company's business and ambitions.
How did Albini manage the confinement requirements imposed by the outbreak of the Coronavirus?
Here, the lockdown took place in two phases. First, as in France now, living spaces, restaurants and shops of all kinds were closed. At that time, industries considered "non-essential", of which we are a part, could still work, as long as they respected the safety standards in force, from distancing to masks for each employee. On the Albini side, the teams dedicated to fabric quality control therefore continued their activities, for example. That said, whereas usually there are three teams that take turns, there was only one left, the morning one. While all the marketing staff were teleworking.
We need to think of fabrics that, in addition to being beautiful, can protect. From this point of view, this is a revolutionary moment. The crisis must be a total rethinking of our industry.
Since March 26, we have been in the second phase of the fight against Covid-19: Italy has imposed a general lockdown and all our sites are closed. The only thing that can be done today for Albini is to deliver the finished products that they had on their order book. We can cut the fabrics to package them and send them off. It is also possible to ensure the proper receipt of the materials already ordered by us. But that's all. The finishing machines are now at a standstill, there is no more testing or control for anything.
What are, in fact, the economic consequences linked to this sudden stop?
Today, nothing is leaving the stores. To be honest, we are not in the hard part yet. We are only at the beginning of a descent and we do not know when all this will end. So, we are trying to hold on to what we can. A few days ago, we received news from China: there, on its first day of reopening after the lockdown, a Hermès store had accumulated more than 2.5 million euros in sales. In one day! It is something that leaves you a little dreamy.
In Europe, there may be some so-called "revenge" purchases in the wake of the deconfinement. We will want to consume to compensate for everything we were unable to do before, to consecrate the return to freedom, as at the start of the sales. But this will not last, it will be a wave that will quickly subside.
Quite simply because we will then be faced with major economic concerns. Some will have seen their salaries drop due to the crisis, others will no longer have work. There will then be other things to do than to consume clothes indiscriminately. We will probably have to apply the philosophy of less but better, sustainably.
Has Albini thought about reinventing itself, like all those textile manufacturing companies that have started mass-producing masks for healthcare workers?
At the beginning of the crisis, the company received requests, many from French customers, to find out if it was possible to produce fabric to make masks for caregivers. At that time, we only had poplin available, with more or less tight knits, which was not always ideal for making truly effective masks, which could act as a barrier at the medical level, but were certainly useful for the general public.
These are initiatives that we will continue and improve over time, and in this period even more, we hope that this will inspire other workshops, customers and consumers!
We have made some deliveries of fabrics that seemed to us to be of good quality for companies that are usually subcontractors in the luxury world.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the link between the current pandemic and the environment. What about the environmental dimension at Albini?
In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the use of organic fibers. These have the obvious advantage of having a less aggressive impact on the planet. We have chosen to use American cotton because its production is governed by an unfalsifiable traceability system, in the form of a DNA fingerprint. Once the product is finished, woven, dyed, sewn, it is possible to find the precise origin of the cotton, which is not the case for most textiles today.
We also looked into the issue of cotton recycling, without adding synthetic materials. For 2 seasons, we have been offering shirt fabrics in 100% cotton, with 60% recycled cotton. We are working to make these recycled fabrics finer, with a higher count and therefore more luxurious, without making them more fragile. These are initiatives that we will continue and improve over time, and in this period even more, we hope that this will inspire other workshops, customers and consumers!
