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How can you add value to the seven million litres of
milk unfit for consumption that are wasted every
year in France? To answer this question, CNIEL
(National Inter-trade Centre for the Dairy Industry)
and CETI (European Centre for Innovative Textiles)
asked the very media-present fashion designer
Mossi Traoré to produce his first collection made
with milk fibre. An opportunity for him to list on
Instagram the properties of this fabric that is similar
to silk: soft, heat-regulating, fireproof and hypo-
allergenic.
In Mythologies, Roland Barthes stated that in the
grand morphology of substances, milk is characterised
by its molecular density and the creamy and therefore
calming nature of its texture. “Milk is cosmetic. It binds,
recovers, restores,” he concluded, not knowing that one
day milk could also be used to dress the body. Barthes
would have perhaps written that milk is becoming
a symbol of the “Re” economy with the design and
recycling of milk cartons and all their possible
transformations into eco-friendly materials. The more
companies recycle undrinkable milk into natural and
biodegradable textile fibres, the more technology will
develop and the more affordable it will be. Tomorrow,
dairy products will perhaps be lifelong friends for our
wardrobes.