Could Biotechnology Make Fashion a Sustainability Solution?
When it comes to discussions regarding sustainability in the fashion industry, I find myself saying the same things over and over again. “It’s a supply chain issue”, “we need to reduce fashion’s footprint on our environment”, “We need to make and buy garments that last longer and sustain themselves for generations rather than feeding into Fast Fashion”, all valid, but all viewing fashion as the main problem in this struggle for sustainability.
After I thought I heard all the possible talks on making fashion a more eco-friendly industry, I came across one LVMH Prize semi-finalist who brought something completely new to the table, which planted seeds of curiosity across the globe.
Some of Piero D’Angelo’s living garments, grown out of lichens. Images via
Piero D’Angelo, Graduate of Textile Design at Central Saint Martins and Womenswear at The Royal College of Art, proposes a new type of couture that centres on one bold concept: growing your own garments to live beyond your wardrobe.
Like something straight out of science fiction, D’Angelo focuses on how biotechnology can be applied to fashion and textile development. He works with BioTech Lab Open Cell to produce garments that are entirely composed of living organisms, which depending on the biotechnology involved, can be manipulated to produce one-of-a-kind couture ensembles.
One of D’Angelo’s Bioscent generated garments. Image via
For example, one of Piero’s collections focuses on the living organism Physarum Polycephalum and its behavioural aversion and attraction to certain bioscents. Piero proposed that by taking advantage of what the organism is attracted to and repelled by, a couturier could manipulate a blank dress model with certain bioscents to grow this organism around intricate patterns, forming a living textile that resembles lace brocade. In this way, not only would you get a completely unique garment aesthetically, but you would be creating a garment that generates little to no fabric waste and mostly organic production waste. Furthermore, with the right care, the garment would continue to live on as long as the wearer does, as it is technically alive and resists decay, which is both super creepy and super cool, it’s living couture that you grow in your own home.
Though this particular proposal addresses the issues that fashion perpetuates regarding sustainability, D’Angelo is also very adamant in making fashion a solution to sustainability.
In his most recent project, which propelled him to LVMH semi-finalist status, D’Angelo once again proposed growing your own garment - but with an anti-pollution twist. Focusing on the pollutant absorbing properties of lichens, Piero D’Angelo suggests a groundbreaking wardrobe of the future in which garments we wear purify the air around us. He imagines a system in which the buyer receives a blank mesh dress form, which is then submerged in a bath of nutrients, seeds and water, and then grown into a completely individual dress of Red Lichens. And like of course we can look at this and say that it sounds weird to have something growing on your clothes, but I’m not going to lie, the dresses look incredible (peep the dress in the featured image at the top of the page). They look completely unique and very sophisticated, but futuristic and organic all at the same time, giving us more than what we’ve seen from fashion in a long time.
D’Angelo’s vision starts with a DIY kit with a mesh pattern that is submerged and grown into custom living couture. Images via
What inspires me the most about D’Angelo’s work is that he is revisioning fashion in a way that hasn’t been seen before, and in doing so, provides a completely different approach to fashion. D’Angelo’s creations bring us a fashion that returns the wearer to nature, reconnecting us to the origins of many of today’s garments, but without mass production and rapid consumption. I find his whole vision of biotechnology-fuelled garments to be incredibly romantic and incredibly fascinating, and I hope to see him cross paths with some wonderful couturiers in his career (cough Sarah Burton, cough Iris Van Herpen, hit this guy up!). I have only faith in D’Angelo’s work and hopefully we can watch his contributions to the fashion industry grow into something beautiful and sustainable.
featured image via
