Why We Said Stop

Polyester. We wear it every day, often without even knowing it. It hides in our T-shirts, jacket linings, “technical” sweaters, fleeces, and even our jeans. Today, polyester is the world’s most used fiber — produced six times more than cotton (1), which comes in a distant second. Yet most of us have no real idea what polyester actually is.
Polyester Is Plastic.
Polyester begins its life not in a field, but in an oil refinery. It’s a product of crude oil — often of Russian origin — with the world’s largest producers being Hengli in China and Reliance in India (2).
The process is entirely industrial: the oil is heated to extreme temperatures, then combined with chemical catalysts to form PET (polyethylene terephthalate): the same plastic used for disposable water bottles.
That PET is then melted, stretched, and spun into ultra-fine threads before being woven, knitted, and dyed.
The result? The soft, flexible fabric found in most modern clothes — plastic derived from petroleum.
And it doesn’t stop there. If the world ever runs out of oil, polyester production can simply shift to natural gas or coal. Any fossil fuel will do. Because polyester isn’t a natural fiber. It’s a synthetic material, created wherever fossil carbon can be extracted, refined, and transformed.
In other words, every polyester garment begins the same way: not with soil and sunlight, but with drilling, mining, and combustion.
At the start of the millennium, polyester production was still below that of cotton (3). Since then, cotton volumes have stayed relatively stable — but polyester has skyrocketed. Why? Because it’s cheap, quick to produce, and great for profit margins.
Recycled polyester is still plastic.
In recent years, recycled polyester has been presented as the sustainable answer to fast fashion’s plastic problem. On paper, it sounds like progress: reuse waste, reduce oil. In reality, it’s mostly greenwashing: a new story told about the same old material.
It’s made by melting down PET bottles and spinning them into thread, but the fiber itself remains synthetic and dependent on fossil fuels. And to stay durable, it still needs to be blended with new, virgin polyester — meaning more oil, more extraction, more of the same.
Worse, it can’t be recycled again. Once dyed, mixed, or worn, the fabric reaches a dead end: it’s either burned, buried, or eventually breaks down into microplastics that spread through water and air.
Recycled or not, every polyester garment releases these tiny plastic particles with each wash — polluting rivers, oceans, and the food we eat.
To make things worse, fashion has turned recycled polyester into a marketing tool, driving up demand and prices. That shift has made it harder for industries that truly need recycled PET — like building insulation or technical packaging — to afford it.
So while the label might read recycled, the truth remains the same: it’s still plastic, still polluting, and still part of the fossil fuel story.
It’s true — polyester has its practical strengths. But its environmental cost is staggering: from fossil fuel extraction to pollution at every step of its life cycle. And once it’s discarded, it doesn’t biodegrade or compost. Instead, it lingers for centuries — in our soil, in our oceans, and eventually, in our food chain. What we don’t pay for, the planet pays instead.
So at Cévène, we said stop.
We’ve chosen to go back to the source. Every CVN piece is crafted from natural, renewable, and biodegradable materials that come from the earth, not from oil.
Because we believe a garment can be high-performing, comfortable, and elegant — without plastic. For us, true performance isn’t measured by technology or trends, but by respect — for the planet and for the people who wear our clothes.
Sources: (1),(3) Synthetics Anonymous, Fashion Brands’ addiction to fossil fuels, 2021, (2) Dressed to Kill: Fashion brands’ hidden links to Russian oil in a time of war, 2022
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