bioplastic couture collection explores sustainable fabric options made at home
NOT x LIENX shapes a three-piece capsule collection made of agar bioplastic discovering simple food ingredients’ properties in fabric making. Jenny Lai, founder of independent New York-based fashion brand NOT, and Lien Tong, multidisciplinary artist, apparel designer, and co-founder of California-based Gem Studio, collaborated on the collection. Given that the fashion industry produces 92 million tons of textile waste a year, with only 13.6% getting recycled and less than 1% of the recycled material being modified into new clothes, the duo decided to explore creative and sustainable garment options. The complexity of the apparel supply chain and the difficulty of following the lifecycle of fabrics were the motivation leading to the team’s own fully visible, material production. The generated fabric is made out of agar agar, a gelatinous powder derivative from red algae, vegetable glycerin, and water, and can be easily mixed and produced at home. Compared to synthetic fabrics that take hundreds of years to decompose, agar bioplastic decomposes in a few months, and offcuts can be recycled, boiled down, and reused to create new bioplastic following a fully circular system. The agar mixture gets heated, dyed with food coloring, then poured into flat aluminum trays and left to dry for three to five days.