Nicolas Rochat is CEO of Mover, the world’s first one hundred per cent plastic-free sportswear brand. Mover will be an exhibitor at Ocean Talks 2025, taking place at The Magazine, the Serpentine North Gallery in London on 12 June.
Ahead of the event, Caroline White sat down with Nicolas to talk about the environmental problems caused by synthetic apparel and the company’s novel approach to the problem. Listen to the interview below, available on Apple podcasts and Spotify.
We're facing an uncontrollable tide of plastic - and our wardrobes are one of the biggest culprits. According to research, a third of all microplastics in the ocean come from synthetic fibres in clothes, released in their billions with every washing machine cycle. Mover aims to help change that. As the world's first fully plastic-free sportswear brand, their MO is pushing boundaries - but rather than inventing new high-tech fabrics, they are instead going back to basics and working with natural fibres such as cotton and wool.
"It's actually not so counter intuitive," says Rochat. "Because our grandparents were using natural fibres as sailors and sailing around the world." The secret is in how the fabric fibres are knitted together, he says. "These days we can create better weaves which create higher performing fabrics."
Using cotton for skiwear and wool for outdoor sports might feel counterintuitive, but Rochat insists nothing beats nature if you know how to get the best out of it. For their skiwear, for example, Mover uses a dense Ventile cotton invented in the 1930s for the British Army and Navy, and which later put the Burberry trench coat on the map. This specialised fabric is not just breathable, but is also incredibly waterproof and can protect from wind, rain and snow. The brand also uses a 100 per cent wool-based fabric in its collection - not only is the wool fibre itself naturally hydrophobic, but it is a very compact weave, meaning that the water has a hard time pushing through.
And it's not just the fabric Mover had to think about in their mission to create sustainable apparel, but tiny details such as the zips, which traditionally contain traces of plastic. Even the needles on the machines used to make the clothes needed to be changed to accommodate ones that could use cotton not synthetic threads.
Last year, Mover announced a collaboration with eco-conscious sailing competition SailGP, whose team was using neoprene but found it uncomfortable to move around in. With Mover's help, they moved to natural fibres, with the development of an onshore and offshore kit. "It was an opportunity to for us to collaborate with some of the best sailors in the world on one of the most demanding, high-performing sports on the planet, and to prove that natural fibre will excel," says Rochat.
Meet the Mover team at Ocean Talks on 12 June. The event is free and tickets are still available. Register via the link below.
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