Esmod students create projects with Alpaca fiber

Lighter, warmer, stronger, and more comfortable than sheep's wool, alpaca fiber comes from a very soft animal, in every sense of the word, native to the Andes Mountains: a cousin of the llama. It is a herd animal, a grazer (ideally between 8 and 10 animals on a surface of one hectare), which produces a fiber that is both very fine and hollow, which gives it an immense insulating power that allows it to adapt to changes in extreme temperatures: it is not without reason that NASA chose this miraculous fiber to dress its astronauts at the beginning of the space conquest. In short, exceptional wool, one of the most beautiful in the world.

This is the message that we remember after the presentation, last Tuesday, June 8, at the Esmod Paris school, of the creations designed by 21 students in the framework of an Alpaca Awards competition initiated by Promperu. The students came from all over France since the school has establishments in Lyon, Rennes, Roubaix, and Bordeaux. Promperu, which is the export promotion agency of Peru in France, had chosen Esmod to highlight the label Alpaca del Perù to young designers.

The aim was, within the framework of the Bicentenary of the independence of Peru, to discover or rediscover this fiber which makes the pride of the Peruvian textile industry but also to develop it through modern and original collections. During 4 months, the selected students, all levels, worked alone or in groups that allowed them to learn the techniques of knitting by hand or machine. A jury of professionals rewarded the technical and artistic qualities of five students.

Manon Coiffard, a first-year student at Esmod Bordeaux won the first prize: an all-expenses-paid internship in a Peruvian fashion company in the Cusco region. She was followed on the podium by Louise Le Loch, a first-year student at Esmod Rennes who obtained an internship in a Peruvian fashion company in the Arequipa region. Lou Grandpré and Elanor Le Blanc, in their second year at Esmod Paris, won for the third prize an internship in a Peruvian fashion company in the region of Junin. The two other winners were Nora Garcia and Juan Franco Quiliche Calderon, respectively in Intensive Training at Esmod Rennes and the second year at Esmod Paris.

An industry challenged

The 75 kilos of alpaca fiber with which the students were able to provide their vision were supplied by Peruvian spinners Incatops, Itessa, and Michell. The gift of alpaca wool is a prize: it grows continuously at a rate of one centimeter per month. It is, therefore, necessary to shear it once a year during the summer season: each animal produces 2.5 kilos of wool per year. This rarity is all the more precious as it is now subject to new challenges in the world due to global warming. Even the Altiplano, which in the heart of the Andes is the highest inhabited region in the world after the Tibetan plateau, has seen its environment change in recent years. These temperature increases also explain why the wool produced in France by Alpaca farms is of lower quality than that produced in Peru.

Photos: Esmod

This article was originally published on FashionUnited.fr