We Design for a Resilient Future

Renewable materials have always been a Designtex passion. In fact, we still make Mohair Plus, a luxury performance upholstery launched in the 1960s. Since then, our family of biobased products has grown to include upholsteries composed of linen and recycled wool, and wallcoverings composed of cellulose from sustainably forested wood.

Today, we are continuing to evolve our offering by introducing biobased coated products, beginning with our first ASTM D6866 verified biobased polyurethane textile, Ethos. Emphasizing circular and renewable materials, this new textile offers all the high-performance attributes of coated upholstery, while taking the next step in sustainability.

Designtex’s Loop to Loop platform is created by upcycling our own textile waste. A decade ago, we began an ongoing collaboration with three supply chain partners to collect our textile cutting waste from furniture manufacturing and transform it into new yarn. The new yarn using this waste is woven into an array of upholstery and multiuse fabrics.

Closing the loop on our fabric waste not only yielded the first upholstery pattern Loop to Loop (included in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design museum), but also a group of textiles that are consciously designed with future recycling in mind. By avoiding finishes, backings, and harmful ingredients, these textiles can easily enter a circular system for another life, when their time comes.

Our approach to shapes, colors, textures and materials is deeply rooted in the principles of biophilia, which is the innate human attraction to the natural world. Research has shown that incorporating biophilic design into the built environment can have significant positive psychological and physiological responses, including stress reduction and improvements to mental wellbeing. Referencing the complex geometries and chromatics of nature, our designs provide spaces with elements that offer gentle support to our visual and haptic senses.