The minibus pulls up outside the futuristic façade of UYN HQ in Asola, Italy, while robot mowers tend to the immaculate lawns outside under an azure sky.
I’m clutching what feels like a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory golden ticket inviting me on ‘a tour of discovery of the most advanced research academy in the textile industry’.
I received my hot ticket as part of the worldwide launch of this sustainable apparel and footwear brand. UYN, by the way, is pronounced ‘win’ and stands for ‘unleash your nature’.
We’re ushered into the imposing entrance hall of the large showroom building and assigned to groups, each with different-coloured wristbands.
Then we’re swept off in different directions by our guides for the day: ours is sales and marketing executive Stella Varchi, who, though she has buckets of enthusiasm for her task, thankfully isn’t as eccentric as Willy Wonka.
Whirring machines and sweet-like yarns
First stop is the factory building. We enter to the sound of enormous, automated sewing machines whirring loudly, threads feeding in at all angles.
The yarn is woven into funnel-web spiders’ web shapes in the belly of the machines, and then, every so often, we see partially made seamless loops of material of different sizes (the basis of many garments) fly out of clear tubes and into barrel-like tubs below.
At one end of the warehouse, a machine tests the stretchiness of the fabric to its impressive limit on a tall machine while the attendant checks off the stats.
At the other, the basis of sock-like uppers for cycling shoes and trainers are being spat out of other machines at regular intervals.
We’re then bustled along to the next room past huge spools and spools of multi-coloured yarn, many in bright, sweet-like colours.
I sneak a few quick pictures and catch up with the others, fearful of being left to suffer a fate like Augustus Gloop and co.
This room has designers at computers coming up with new designs for base layers, the next, prototypes being cut out by hand and stitched at household sewing machines.
Passing through another area, we’re told how the towering mounds of colourful offcuts are repurposed into highly insulating and super-lightweight ‘Airnest’ material for padding jackets as the company recycles 100 per cent of their textile waste.
Next, we’re moved into another noisy room, where we see those sock-like uppers put onto lasts and subjected to extremes of temperature in their next step to becoming shoes.
Bikes breather
UYN, along with high-end Italian handmade-to-measure road-bike brand Titici, are owned by parent company Trerè, so we also had a peek in the brand-new Titici showroom on the way past, and coveted the many shiny bikes on display: road, gravel, MTB and ebikes too, also admiring the examples of custom paint jobs that could be yours if you can stump up the necessary wad of Euros.
We pick up ‘Flexy’ featherweight sections of carbon-fibre top-tubes that are made using PAT (Plate Absorber Technology), allowing the top-tube to be an impossibly slim 8mm thick and absorbing ‘up to 18 per cent more vibrations while maintaining torsional stiffness’.
The Relli gravel bike frame also boasts the brand’s new AAT vibration-damping system (or arch absorber technology), with an arched seatpost that’s designed to help soak up vibrations on gravel.
Also on show are bikes ridden by Italian greats such as Paolo Bettini, who was an ambassador with Titici from 2018-20.
Little did I know, but I’d be allowed to try out this very bike the next day, on a ride by the shores of Lake Garda with some of the Titici crew and one of UYN’s sponsored athletes, ultra cyclist Omar di Felice, the first rider in the world to reach Everest base camp, in winter, and winner of the 2023 Trans America race.
He has also attempted to cross the Antarctic solo by bike, with all the technical clothing requirements that brings (a suit that can cope with temperatures down to -50°C but can also give the freedom of movement needed for cycling). A perfect project for UYN.
Interactive R&D
If I’d thought the tour so far was like something out of a Roald Dahl novel, the afternoon visit around AREAS, UYN’s state-of-the-art, 3,500m sq research and testing centre, was about to get several notches closer (AREAS stands for Academy for Research and Engineering in Apparel and Sport).
We enter a glossy, white, solar-panel-topped, cross-shaped building, designed to be energy efficient (UYN uses 100 per cent renewable energy throughout the site), and, buoyed by our Italian buffet lunch chased down with espresso, we embark on part two of the tour, walking past a display telling us that UYN aims to use nature for higher performance as we ‘enter the post-synthetic era’.
We’re shown prototypes, including ski wear developed in conjunction with Prada, with heating elements and cooling devices to help you stay at the ideal temperature.
We pass by an automated machine constantly flexing running shoes to check how well the soles cope, and spot white-lab-coated researchers testing the materials for waterproofing, abrasion resistance and the like.
Next, the Bio Lab section displays the sustainable natural materials that form the basis of their materials, from superlight South American Kapok to Flexicorn, a natural alternative to elastane, and we catch sight of a brainstorming area, where exciting new ideas are hatched.
It goes up another notch in the Brain Unit, where we meet Hyper, the thermal mannequin who’s walking while bedecked in a mismatched mixture of clothing and shoes to see how they perform.
Hyper is one of only five of his kind in the world who can reproduce a human’s physiological reactions during sport (think sweating, warming up and cooling down) while never becoming tired.
Chamber of secrets
For the grand finale, it becomes interactive. To give us a feel for how the garments are tested by real-life athletes, we hop onto bikes on turbo trainers on wobble boards, and try running on a Reaxing treadmill that lurches about in an attempt to better replicate real-life running on uneven ground and different gradients.
We also test our reactions against a board that lights up with random lights in random places, seeing how fast we could swipe at them, before donning UYN baselayers and entering the Arctic Chamber to test their performance in -20°C cold via a thermal-imaging camera (and praying they haven’t left us to perish as we’d asked too many questions, in a Wonka-style twist).
Luckily, we’re whisked on past the Monsoon chamber, where it constantly rains to test the performance of the brand’s Membrain 115 membrane.
After exiting through the gift shop with a much greater appreciation of how all the tempting products come to fruition, we’re ushered back to the factory and shown into seats laid out amongst the machinery.
And there we witness a surreal fashion show, with models strutting down the aisles between the now silent, still machines, showing off the breadth of UYN’s offerings.
The final flourish in a day that’s stimulated the senses and the mind is an impressive buffet on the top floor of the showroom, with an array of sushi, ravioli and more.
As the many jars of brightly coloured assorted sweets on the dessert table reawaken my inner Charlie Bucket, I muse on the fact that the people behind UYN aren’t afraid to push the boundaries of what’s possible. They use plenty of imagination in their quest to create the best activewear garments they can by combining materials derived from nature with biotechnology.
And all while treading as lightly as possible on the planet. A 21st-century Willy Wonka would surely approve.
UYN’s secret ingredients
Find out more about the Bio-materials used by UYN.
- Kapok: Hailing from South America, this, say UYN, is the world’s lightest natural fibre. It’s organic, hand harvested and comes from the pods of rainforest plants. It also has natural antibacterial and hypoallergenic properties.
- Flexycorn: This recyclable material is a ‘plant-based bio-polyester’ that comes from corn that isn’t used for human consumption. It’s touted as an alternative to stretchy elastane, keeping its stretch and shape for longer.
- Ecolypt: Strength and elasticity are this fibre’s properties, along with high breathability. It hails from eucalyptus wood pulp and is responsibly sourced, biodegradable and all enzymes used to make it are recovered and reused.
- Biolight: It’s made from the cellulose in beech wood and can, UYN say, absorb twice as much water as cotton. This soft-touch material is 100% biodegradable and comes from responsibly managed forests.
- Natex: This one comes from castor oil seeds and is claimed to reduce garment weight by up to 25%. It also dries 50% faster than nylon, while being more elastic, and helps to minimise an athlete’s odour.
- Coolth_SL: Created from cotton linters, the short filaments that envelope the seed, Coolth is used to add comfort, thanks to its smooth structure. It also boasts cooling properties, absorbs sweat, and is biodegradable.
