Technical textiles are utilised in a plethora of fields, although they are still relatively unrecognised and not very visible. Yet they are playing an increasingly important role in fashion, especially in the luxury sector, always keen on innovation. European consumption of technical textiles has grown from a value of €8 billion in 1995 to almost €30 billion today, although it is difficult to quantify the revenue of this highly disparate sector.

Italian manufacturers, currently the leading technical textiles producers in Europe, attempted to outline the sector’s salient features in a new symposium, called ‘Textile Made in Italy 5.0’, that was held in Milan on May 18.