From Lithium To Rare Earths: Wardrobe Innovation Starts With “Critical” Raw Materials

For decades, the fashion industry has innovated through continuous research across design, style, branding, production and marketing. Today, a growing part of innovation is shifting towards new materials capable of giving garments and accessories unique performance characteristics, particularly in sectors such as sportswear and footwear.

Materials such as lithium, graphite, rare earths — metals with unique properties, including high conductivity, magnetism and the ability to form fluorescent compounds, making them indispensable in many technological applications — and metallic titanium are already being used in smart textiles, wearable sensors and high-performance sporting goods such as tennis rackets, bicycles, skis, shoes, helmets, support systems and fastening systems, explains Omar Antonio Cescut, Industrial Strategy & Innovation Executive; specialised in circular economy, Critical Raw Materials, and strategic materials.

The industry is beginning to talk about Smart Garments or Smart Clothing: garments that integrate electronic technologies, sensors, advanced materials and communication systems to perform functions that go beyond simply protecting or enhancing the aesthetics of the body. One example? adidas garments incorporating Climacool technology, used by athletes such as Kimi Antonelli to cool the body before getting into the cockpit, or by football players to cope with the extremely high temperatures experienced during the latest World Cup.

Almost all these materials fall under the category that the European Union defines as critical raw materials, namely raw materials considered critical because they are of major economic importance to strategic industries and technologies while also presenting a high supply risk — for example, because extraction or refining is concentrated in a small number of countries, Europe is heavily dependent on imports, or there are few alternatives.

This puts companies in the difficult position of having to secure these materials within a geopolitical context in which states are seeking to guarantee control over their supply. “For years, the fashion industry has talked about cotton, wool, leather and polyester; in the coming years, it will also have to understand rare earths, graphite, lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and titanium, because they will increasingly be present in products with a high technological content. The fashion supply chain could become a strategic materials supply chain,” explains Cescut.

How? Through the circular economy. “Today, the circular economy in fashion focuses on recovering textiles, fibres, leather, plastics, precious and non-precious metals; tomorrow, it will also have to recover electronic components, sensors, batteries and all the critical materials incorporated into products,” explains Cescut.

This is the principle of urban mining: recovering raw materials from products that have reached the end of their life, which would otherwise have to be extracted again and reintroduced into the supply chain. With the progressive integration of electronics and advanced materials into garments, footwear and accessories, this concept could increasingly apply to fashion as well. Discarded products could thus become not simply waste to be managed, but a potential secondary source of critical raw materials.