Freitag: sustainable uniqueness

Among the innovations and proposals presented during the Milan Design Week 2019, the most Instagram-friendly in recent years, which has seen a record turnout and embraced a new slice of the public thanks to the numerous initiatives, which were not limited to design brands.

Among these there is also Freitag, the label born in Zurich, 1993, from the ideas of two students, Markus and Daniel, continuously looking for creative inspiration. The experimental approach will lead to the creation of the Messenger Bag, the first hand-sewn bag in a small apartment and made from used truck tarpaulins, car seat belts, and bicycle wheel inner tubing. Within the space set up in the Ventura Lambrate district, we were lucky enough to have a chat with Daniel Freitag, asking him what it means to be a sustainable brand in 2019.

Recently the world of fashion is moving more and more towards sustainable production, encouraging the second life of raw materials. Daniel told us about the global difficulty but the naturalness with which Freitag pursues its non-invasive and environmentally friendly philosophy, from the very beginning, when the issue of recycling could not take advantage of the resonance box created in recent years.

"In 1993 it was soon for sustainability, Switzerland is a small country and for this reason, it was the right place to start a journey like Freitag. Switzerland was the ruler of recycling in the 1980s, so as children we already had the setting to think in this direction, plus because in Switzerland people reuse everything. Being a graphic designer, it was wonderful for me to see how things were reinvented."

Reinventing the waste raw material is a current topic among design studies because it allows reducing production costs by generating a type of cyclical production and consumption, which manages to directly involve the end customer.

"The circular economy is so logical, we need a lot of dialogue with the people who ask for our items, we have very different age groups based on countries. Many brands focus only on consumers around the age of 25, we aim more at uniting such a way of life, someone looks for beauty, someone for functionality."

In these 26 years, Freitag has gained high credibility, so much so that a hard core of buyers and a real collecting phenomenon have formed, due to the fact that each product is made from a unique fabric, modified from its previous life and for this is not replicable.

"We use waste materials, we bring them to Zurich, we wash them, we cut and we cover them with PVC. The community is wide, in Asia we have collectors, who post the products using the hashtag "frtg", the uniqueness makes collecting interesting. "

It was precisely in Asia that the idea of Freitag was born, Daniel explains that it was a trip to India that stimulated the project, after seeing the way in which locals managed to recycle everything thanks to simple tools.

"We have a strong market in Japan, with which we share great attention to the uniqueness of the products, as well as a large re-use market. We are trying to expand into the West Coast, a territory with great potential. Italy is an important market for us, especially Milan and Turin, where everything goes according to fashion trends, everyone wonders what has happened to then look for the anti-trend."

Freitag has succeeded, also in this MDW19, in confirming itself as one of the brands most sensitive to the theme of sustainability, confirming how a sensitivity towards the environment can be brought together under the same roof with high-quality standards.