Chanel Launches Nevold, a Bold New Recycling Venture with Industry-Wide Ambition

In an ambitious move towards rethinking the luxury fashion lifecycle, Chanel recently launched Nevold, a new standalone entity dedicated to the recovery, reinvention, and large-scale production of recycled materials. With this move, the French fashion house is expanding beyond couture and craftsmanship, and delving deep into material innovation. Via Nevold, Chanel is positioning sustainability not as a side project, but as a core business priority.

So What Does Nevold Actually Do?

Short for “never old,” Nevold is Chanel’s in-house circularity engine. It is a dedicated structure designed to collect waste (both Chanel’s and from other brands), dismantle end-of-life products, and transform that waste into high-quality, traceable raw materials that meet luxury standards. These new materials will then be used within luxury fashion collections. The initiative is rooted in the belief that waste isn’t an unfortunate byproduct of fashion, but an untapped resource waiting to be reengineered.

At the heart of Nevold are three key components. First is L’Atelier des Matières, founded by Chanel, that disassembles used or unsold products and sorts materials for reuse. Next is Filatures du Parc, a French spinning mill that specializes in recycled yarns. And finally, there is Authentic Material, a startup that converts leather waste into usable new materials.

These partners allow Chanel to blend recycled and virgin fibers, creating new hybrid textiles that maintain the brand’s exacting standards. Prior to Nevold's inception, recycled materials have already been making their way into Chanel's creations, utilizing recycled fibers in their signature tweeds, and and utilizing waste-derived materials instead of plastic in the heels of its iconic slingback pumps.

Nevold's Leadership & Vision is Unmatched in the Luxury Industry

Nevold is led by Sophie Brocart, an engineer and former CEO of Patou, who joined Chanel in January 2025. Under her leadership, the initiative aims to scale material circularity, not just within Chanel but across the broader fashion ecosystem.

It's important to note that Nevold is not a marketing ploy or symbolic gesture to appease stakeholders. It's a very real venture aimed at reducing fashion waste across the board. “At Chanel, we didn’t destroy unsold products,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s President of Fashion. “But we also didn’t yet have a real system to understand their full potential. Nevold is that system.”

Unlike many sustainability efforts focused on resale or repurposing finished garments, Nevold tackles the issue upstream — in the raw materials and manufacturing phase. That makes it more technical, more foundational, and potentially more transformative.

This is a strategic pivot, driven in part by growing pressure on natural resources. Chanel’s core materials — cotton, wool, silk, cashmere, and leather — account for 80% of its materials by volume. Climate change, environmental degradation, and supply chain instability are making them harder to secure.

“Nevold is our third activity,” Pavlovsky explained, positioning it alongside Chanel’s core fashion division and its revered Métiers d’Art ateliers. “We are not trying to replace what nature gives us. But we do need to find high-quality, traceable alternatives to materials that are increasingly hard to source.”

Nevold Won't Make Chanel Money in the Near-Term

Nevold is not expected to generate immediate profit. “We’re not setting hard KPIs around how much recycled content goes into our collections,” said Pavlovsky. “This is about long-term capability, resilience, and readiness. If we don’t start now, we’ll never be prepared for what comes next.”

“Nevold is not about Chanel recovering its own waste to make more Chanel,” Pavlovsky emphasized. “It’s about collecting waste—ours and others’—and transforming it into materials for tomorrow.”

Chanel is Excited to Share Nevold with the Entire Luxury Industry

Importantly, Chanel is not gatekeeping this innovation. The brand envisions Nevold as a business-to-business platform that will help the entire industry access and benefit from high-quality recycled materials—an unusually open approach in the typically more closed world of luxury fashion.

While so far Nevold is showing promising potential thus far, critics argue that initiatives like Nevold may fall short if fashion’s overproduction problem remains unaddressed. Recycling programs, no matter how innovative, can’t fully offset the environmental cost of producing millions of new items every year.

Moreover, the luxury sector’s history with waste—including the destruction of unsold goods—has left a credibility gap. While regulators in Europe are beginning to crack down on such practices, meaningful industry change will require not just innovation but volume restraint.

For now, Nevold is a cost center. But for Chanel, it’s also a long-term hedge; it is a way to protect not only the environment but the brand’s legacy of craft and excellence. As the fashion industry grapples with growing environmental and regulatory pressure, Nevold might not just be Chanel’s sustainability play... it could actually be its smartest strategic move to date.