Introducing Chanel’s New Recycling Platform: Nevold
A circular shift benefitting both luxury labels and the planet
In an industry where luxury often demands newness, Chanel is flipping the script in a big way. Enter Nevold—a bold new initiative dedicated to circularity that’s as much about sustainability as it is shrewd business sense.
Nevold—short for “never old”—has a core mission to invent, produce and structure future materials through recycled fibres all while maintaining the scrupulous criteria of luxury design. But, crucially, Nevold isn’t just a Chanel lab. It’s a B2B platform inviting partnerships with everything from yarn mills and material recyclers to hospitality and sportswear brands.
Led by Sophie Brocart—former CEO of Patou and a trained engineer—Nevold brings together expertise from L’Atelier des Matières, Filatures du Parc, Authentic Material, and academic institutions like Cambridge University to achieve it's mission. After all, as Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, told Vogue Business, “Chanel is too small on its own to build the scale this requires".
But why has Chanel taken on the role as catalyst for this bold new project? “We started by asking ourselves what happens to the materials that don’t make it into a final product, or those that reach the end of their first life. At Chanel, we didn’t destroy unsold products. But we also didn’t yet have a real system to understand their full potential. Nevold is that system," explained Pavlovsky.
And Chanel is far from alone in its need for this circular system. Limited availability of high‑quality natural materials—cotton, wool, cashmere, silk, leather—makes reinventing the supply chain not just admirable, but essential for luxury labels. "The scarcity of high-quality, traceable virgin raw materials calls for a collective response from all industry players," reads the Nevold press release.
So, as Nevold answers both a luxury business issue while taking big strides forward in the sustainable fashion sphere, it's safe to say all industry insiders are excited to see what it starts to produce. Now we wait and watch it grow.
