Can Chanel’s Atelier des Matières Become a Model for Italy?

From mid-July, Europe has no more excuses: the destruction of unsold products is banned, and companies will have to find new ways to manage waste and excess inventory. Among major brands, however, some have already revolutionised their processes to make them more circular: in 2019, Chanel founded the Atelier des Matières with the aim of giving a second life to luxury materials and products.

It is a B2B company that provides services to all premium companies (not only the French maison) and operates mainly on three levels: recovering raw materials, transforming them into new materials or objects, and developing circular solutions.

Inside its laboratories, products are selected, dismantled, separated by material, stripped of brands and logos, and then sent through recovery processes. The key concept is that the materials used in luxury products are of extremely high quality and should not be devalued, but rather considered a resource.

In Italy, some companies already work on parts of these activities, mainly focusing on the recovery of leather and textiles, but the connection between the finished product and the material still appears to be missing. The Atelier des Matières represents precisely this missing link. It is a segment that the Italian supply chain should begin to consider essential, also because it represents a business model capable of creating new specialised roles.

Making the supply chain circular will in fact require new professionals specialised in the selective dismantling of bags and accessories, with the ability to separate and assess the condition of leather, metal and textiles, directing them towards recycling or regeneration processes while ensuring full traceability.