Plastic-free sequins that divert food waste from landfills. Alternatives to leather that restore biodiversity. Sustainable material designers are expanding their remit in inventive new ways to create positive impact.
Brands can play an important role in championing positive impact. “It’s about thriving, not just surviving,” says Seetal Solanki, founder of London design studio Ma-tt-er and author of the 2018 book, Why Materials Matter.
Positive impact presents challenges on multiple fronts, says Adele Orcajada, co-founder of Material Driven, a material library and consultancy based between London and Dallas. “It has to cover the people making the material, their health and the material’s end of life. Is it bringing nutrients back into the earth and helping the planet regenerate? Will consumers feel they are making a positive impact by choosing that product?”
Investing in development without putting pressure on the outcomes is key, adds Lebanese-Canadian systems designer Céline Semaan-Vernon, co-founder of Slow Factory Foundation. Over the past year, Slow Factory has run an incubator programme called One x One with Swarovski and the United Nations, pairing three New York-based designers with scientists working on sustainable materials.
The results show how positive impact can be interpreted across social and environmental issues. Designer Mara Hoffman created an apprenticeship programme with Custom Collaborative, providing skills training and jobs in upcycling for marginalised women. Designer Phillip Lim developed a luxury dress made from carbon-sequestering algae sequins. Streetwear label Public School grew a leather substitute from bacteria.
Public School worked with scientist Dr. Theanne Schiros on the One x One incubation programme to grow a leather alternative from bacteria.
© Dr. Theanne Schiros, Jon Brown
The programme initially highlighted the challenges of cross-industry collaborations, ranging from poor communication and material illiteracy to unintentional harm. “When we brought scientists and fashion designers together, there was so much translation that needed to happen between the disciplines,” acknowledges Semaan-Vernon. “We were misunderstanding everything at the beginning, so we needed to create a new, shared language for collaboration.”
For One x One, Phillip Lim was paired with researcher Charlotte McCurdy. “The combination of creative minds, but with completely different approaches, presents the greatest potential for sustainable innovation,” says Lim. “Surround yourself with people who think differently and you’ll be amazed how it shifts your perspective on what is possible.”
“The carbon-sequestering algae sequin feels like a sequin made from plastic,” he explains. “You would never know it was made from algae. With time, trial and error, and creativity, we can create sustainable solutions to old challenges.” While the concept was explored for just one dress, Lim is now working on scaling it for commercial use.
Education drives positive impact
Most fashion collaborations are superficial, says Céline Semaan-Vernon. “Logos may be swapped and aesthetics may be joined, but that’s where the collaboration ends.” For collaborations to become meaningful, she says, fashion designers need to support a process of re-education. “I would encourage the fashion industry to divert from marketing to education, which meets a lot of the same KPIs, forging connections with the public, influencing them and building trust.”
Designer Phillip Lim and researcher Charlotte McCurdy created a dress from carbon-neutral materials, using algae sequins on an antiperspirant and thermoregulating base by Pyrates.
© Phillip Lim team, Charlotte McCurdy, Slow Factory
She cites the Slow Factory’s peer-to-peer Open Education programme, which now has 10,000 students enrolled and is led by Black, Brown, Indigenous and minority ethnic teachers. “The more brands invest in un-learning and re-learning, the better they will make decisions and the better leaders they will become.”
Education helps to unlock positive impact. “We currently exist in material illiteracy. Education is the beginning of moving past that,” says Solanki. “Design schools often teach a product-first approach, but it should be material-first, so you’re not shoehorning a material into the end of your design process, but understanding the material’s behaviours and characteristics from the start.”
The process is improved by including the communities affected by material innovations. London-based designer Fernando Laposse created his signature Totomoxtle material — a leather alternative blending the deep purple and soft cream colours of heirloom corn husks — in collaboration with indigenous farmers in Mexico. The corn helps restore biodiversity and provides food security for the farmers, while its husks generate skills and income through the Totomoxtle programme.
“Instinct, intuitiveness, our lived experiences, cultural contexts and associations: these are all key components of building worlds that are positively impactful,” says Solanki. “The material and immaterial worlds have to exist in parallel.”
Making waste wearable
Positive impact isn’t limited to new materials. It can come about through finding new uses for existing materials. “We have 160,000 unique materials across the world, and we’re making more without using the ones we have to their full potential,” says Solanki, who is currently exploring the potential of algae.
Many sustainable material designers have turned their attention to food waste in recent years. In 2020, London-based biomaterial designer Alice Potts created a jewellery capsule with Australian brand Mimco using waste from florists (who had lost wedding work in lockdowns) as pigment for her bio-based plastic sequins. “We sourced locally to support people affected by Covid-19,” says Potts. The colours were dictated by seasonal waste readily available in London.
Alice Potts used local London waste sources to pigment her bio-based jewellery collaboration with Mimco, including inedible waste from butchers and flowers grown for weddings cancelled due to Covid-19.
© Mimco and National Gallery of Victoria
Society’s general aversion to thinking about waste can be a barrier to innovation. “Food waste is often considered pure waste, but now it’s something of value. I like symbiotic relationships like this, where one industry feeds another,” says Orcajada. Designer Alice Potts used inedible animal waste from local butchers for pigments, alongside flowers and food.
“When a material manages to make you forget that the roots may be undesirable, that’s a huge win,” says Material Driven co-founder Purva Chawla. Examples of what Chawla terms “challenging waste” include rope made from hair swept up in salons (created by Dutch designer Sanne Visser) and Scalite, a material crafted from fish scales.
Scaling sustainable innovations
Alice Potts prefers collaborations that are small-scale and nimble, wary of tipping the balance into negative impact by generating too much demand for waste. “There’s always that fear when biomaterials expand,” she says. “I work with designers to use waste that is local to them, so everything is made to order and made to scale. I would never push my material to a point where it wasn’t doing good.” Her Mimco collaboration featured just 20 pieces priced between £200-£500, which sold out in minutes.
Could brands take these projects further? “The ability of these materials to be scaled up indicates the impact they will have,” says Chawla. “Material designers often need a brand to act as a patron, giving them the time, funding or first major project to scale their innovations.”
Plant-based leather alternative Mirum is created by Illinois-based Natural Fiber Welding, which secured backing from Ralph Lauren in August. “Their technology has the power to not only advance our work at Ralph Lauren, but effect positive change across the entire industry,” vice chairman and chief innovation officer David Lauren said at the time.
Material Driven says brands looking to scale sustainable material innovations need to adjust their expectations. “Forget the traditional way of working with material suppliers,” says Orcajada. “You will be working alongside the designer. It will be complicated and you may get frustrated.”
Mara Hoffman works with Custom Collaborative in New York to train and employ marginalised women.
© Myesha Evon Gardner
Mara Hoffman’s new Climate Beneficial Fiber is a wool knit that sequesters more carbon than its production uses. It’s been created over several years with agriculturalists, scientists and manufacturers. Grazing sheep are moved between farming landscapes, allowing the land to regenerate and draw more carbon from the atmosphere than the production of knitwear generates. “In order to scale properly, you need to work in advance to ensure that the supply will be there when necessary,” says Hoffman.
Brands need patience, adds Chawla. “There’s no plug and play. You can’t expect a new material to perform the same way with the same machinery and costs. It might take three months to reach the quantities you need, or its application might be limited to certain molds or conditions.”
The proponents of positive impact materials are eager to improve the world, but they urge designers and brands to be realistic. “Not every material is meant for mass production,” says Solanki. “Negative impact happens when we misunderstand the material world.”
You can watch How to create positive impact with natural materials below. This digital talk was part of Première Vision 2021.
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