CACTUS FLOWER

The minds behind Desserto are spinning the desert plant into (eco-friendly) gold.

- VÉRONIQUE HYLAND

Consider the humble cactus. A resident of this planet well before humans emerged, outliving both us and the elements, it's playing nature's ultimate version of the long game.

For Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez Duarte, it also might be the spiky secret to solving fashion's waste problem. After meeting while studying abroad in Taiwan-and bonding over the fact that they had the same birth date-the two men became fast friends. Cázarez Duarte went on to work in fashion, and López Velarde in the automotive space. "We were not happy about all the contamination that we were causing the environment," Cázarez Duarte says. "We started asking, 'How can we improve this industry [from within]?'"