Korean golfwear blends merino wool with rPET
South Korea’s Cool Bears recently launched Aven, a golfwear brand designed with eco-friendly intentions.
With a product mix of 60% womenswear and 40% menswear, Aven’s key point of differentiation is its patent-pending Polar Ice textile technology, made from a knitted blend of merino wool and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET or recycled polyester), collected from waste plastic bottles.
Chief executive, Lee Min-jae, told local media that Polar Ice uses merino wool for its temperature-regulating properties, but that the company opted to blend the material with rPET for increased durability (he said that the wool was not usually used for golfwear, due what he described as its “weak” levels of durability).
For some items, the skin-touching inner lining is naturally hypoallergenic merino, whereas the outer fabric is recycled polyester.
Part of the collection is fully rPET-derived, but other articles such as bottoms reportedly also contain recycled nylon rewoven from fabric scraps.
Mr Lee commented that one of Aven’s t-shirts may incorporate around 20 recycled plastic bottles, with six being used per cap, for example.
Image: Cool Bears.
