Who are we ?

Founder

Design for resilience,
Vanessa Colignon’s vision

More than 10 years of research in the fashion
and textile sector

A fair society in harmony with nature has always been the dream of Vanessa Colignon, founder of Design for Resilience. And to achieve this, she has decided to tackle a major problem: the fashion and textile industry.

Because in the end, textile design and sewing are what she has always been passionate about! Born in Charleroi in 1989, Vanessa started her secondary education in fashion and clothing. She graduated in 2008 with the title of seamstress, pattern maker and pattern cutter (creation of made-to-measure clothes). In 2009, she became an assistant designer. Her graduation collection won 2nd prize from the jury and the public. At the same time, she studied weaving and textile design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Charleroi. In 2010, she joins the fashion design section of La Cambre. However, as she no longer finds meaning in the fashion sector in the face of environmental issues, she decides to take to the road.

It is by noticing the extent of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the textile industry that she decided to focus her research on natural and ecological textile fibres.

In order to understand each stage of textile production, she has worked in various fashion houses and ecocenter that are self-sufficient in terms of textile production. Her goal? To understand how to produce a garment or fabric in a way that respects workers, the living world and animal welfare.

In this search for a fairer production, she followed a training in agroecology in 2015, as well as a training in naturalism in 2016. In 2019, she decided to specialise in knitwear design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.

At the same time, the idea of Design for resilience was born. A brand of healthy, ecological textile production, accessible to all. Its first product? A resilient sponge, capable of replacing the synthetic sponges of large surfaces and being more ethical, but also more durable and more efficient.

Her researches for the resilient sponge won the WBDM (Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode) Award and the Public Prize at the BeCraft “Tremplin” 2019 competition and was awarded 7th place for the Public Prize at the Green Product Award 2020 international competition.

More information on
https://www.vanessacolignon.be

Production partners

Ceetex: the resourcefulness of textiles.

More than 30 years of experience in knitwear.

Created by Anne and Romain Dendievel, Ceetex is one of the last Belgian companies specialising in knitting. Probably the last in Wallonia.

Heir to a tradition that goes back three generations of knitting enthusiasts and located in the heart of the former great textile region of Tournai, Courtrai and Lille, it has been able to preserve a century-old know-how and open up to the most modern techniques.

Ceetex is also a human-sized team that offers quality products manufactured exclusively in its Belgian factory.
Our production partner has a deep sense of integrity and rigour and is committed to an ethic that respects humans, animals and the environment in the broadest sense.