Chinese car manufacturer Nio has launched Blue Sky Lab, its own sustainable fashion brand, which has been shortlisted for a 2023 Dezeen Award.
Blue Sky Lab creates garments and accessories using materials left over from the car manufacturing process including seat belts, airbags and other car-grade fabrics to demonstrate how waste can be "creatively repurposed".
Nio has launched its own fashion brand
Nio claims the label is "the world's first sustainable fashion brand launched by an automotive company and brought to mass production".
Blue Sky Lab made its debut in 2021 at the Shanghai Auto Show and has since reused nearly 55,000 metres of waste fabric.
The pieces are made using leftover materials from car manufacturing These car-grade surplus materials can help to create new high-performance products, according to the brand.
"Blue Sky Lab enjoys an innate advantage by adopting auto-grade materials in its fashion products as these materials outperform their consumer-grade counterparts to a large extent," the brand said.
"We think more about improving our products rather than blindly catering to the external environment. For example, the recycled materials from the airbags are light and durable with high strength, a perfect fit for lightweight fashion items."
Blue Sky Lab launched in 2021 at the Shanghai Auto Show
The materials are simply sterilised and repurposed into a variety of products in line with the brand's minimal futuristic a...