Despite all the innovation, digitalization and AI, Chemnitz and its surroundings are a traditional textile industry location with 150 years of history. It is no coincidence that the FashionTEX Festival takes place in the ‘fabrik Chemnitz’, a former workshop for the production of tulle. In nearby Lößnitz, Christine Werzner designed the first jeans in the GDR in 1974 and even brought the prototype to Chemnitz.

The fact that textile production in Germany, and thus also in Saxony, came to a standstill at an early stage is primarily a question of cost pressure. Whereas more than 300,000 people worked in the textile industry in the Chemnitz region alone before 1990, today there are just 12,000 in around 100 companies, most of which manufacture technical textiles.

The participants in one of many other panels on the second day of the festival agreed that industrial cultural history is nevertheless a great treasure that must be preserved and carried into the future.

As an international company based in Saxony, underwear and perfume manufacturer Bruno Banani is now world-famous. Managing Director Jan Jassner is the second generation to represent a brand made in Saxony that successfully re-established itself after the political change. Plauener Spitze also has a long tradition and is one of the few companies that can still hold its own in the industry today with its high-quality niche product, as managing director Andreas Reinhardt emphasized.

Whether Saxony’s rich history of textile manufacturing has a future will depend above all on whether it can continue to specialize.

Photos: Michael Schmidt