Is It Fashion or Food? Trick Question, it’s Both!

If you’re on the same side of the internet as I am, you may have come across these seemingly otherworldly creations that seem to mimic fruit rollups and popping pearls: Bioplastic. These materials allow the limits of creativity to be expanded even further, with leopard print fabric made of pears and bananas to colorful yarn made of algae.

As the trend cycle continues to shorten, with new styles every month, fast fashion is being produced at a staggering rate. British Vogue reports 80 to 150 billion clothes are produced each year, while 92 million tons of textile waste is produced in the fashion industry in one year. Two designers, Jenny Lai and Lien Tong partnered up to explore sustainable alternatives in order to combat overproduction. With that said, bioplastic creation is a great way to combine chemistry and scientific elements and integrate both into the fashion world. 

Many of these fabrics are composed of a mix of algae and sometimes fruit and vegetables to create variation in color and opacity. Lai and Tong make their fabric out of easy-to-find ingredients like agar-agar (a red algae derivative), vegetable glycerin, and water. While synthetic fabrics take hundreds of years to decompose, the agar-agar decomposes in a few months, remaining pieces can be boiled down and recycled as well. When every garment lasts longer than a lifetime, it is refreshing to see work put into designs that the creators know won’t last. 

Working alongside traditional yarn, bioyarn is similar to bioplastic sheets; however, it is composed of chemicals such as sodium alginate and calcium chloride. Although natural fiber yarns exist, bioyarn offers a creative alternative for avant garde designs. This yarn can be knitted like traditional yarn, but once dried it shrinks, making the knitted design stronger.

The designer @art.alysha on Instagram made her own clothing pieces meant to invoke the care-free playfulness of childhood while also mimicking a fruit roll-up. In the modern age of fashion, many designs, both algae and traditional fabric, lack vibrant colors and Alysha hopes to bring that to her work. Alysha stated her goal as being “to create something whimsical, wearable, and sustainable, proving that eco-materials don’t have to be beige and boring.” As part of the process, Alysha was able to pour the bioplastic concoction into sheets, and then laser cut it into modular shapes, so they could later be pieced together without any sewing. The second piece in Alysha's collection imitates plaid fabric by layering the plastic on top of itself and laminating it. 

In a world where everything we consume has a type of plastic in it, and it is said that there are enough clothes on the planet to last the next six generations, it's refreshing to see the fashion industry incorporate bio materials into their designs to replace synthetic fabrics. Although these designs will not last very long, there is a certain beauty in creating something for the sake of creation, without the goal of making something to last forever. Not all sustainable fashion has to be avant garde and unobtainable. Even simply investing in quality cotton clothing, or other natural fibers that will eventually decompose can be beneficial for the environment. Thrifting is always a good option to contribute to the clothing we already have in the world.