Sustainability

KnitForm+ by Jeanne Mora - SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

KnitForm+ by Jeanne Mora

When Knitting Becomes Structure, Not Surface

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

20. January 2026

KnitForm+ is not a new yarn system or surface innovation. What makes it different is its use of knitting as a structural design method, where form, volume, and stability are generated directly through textile construction rather than imposed through frames, padding, or rigid supports.

Developed by designer Jeanne Mora, KnitForm+ positions knitting as a construction language. Stitch architecture, tension, and machine constraints become the primary drivers of form. Instead of treating these limitations as technical problems, Mora treats them as design parameters that actively shape behaviour. The result is a series of knitted structures that fold, compress, inflate, and expand through their own material logic.

Material origin is intentionally secondary to structure. KnitForm+ is not presented as a fibre innovation, but as a system for working with knitted behaviour across different material bases. What matters is how the textile responds: how it regulates volume, distributes pressure, and transitions from flat to three-dimensional states. Process transparency is embedded in the methodology itself. Each form emerges through iterative sampling, structural testing, and machine-based experimentation rather than decorative finishing.

“What matters is how the textile responds: how it regulates volume, distributes pressure, and transitions from flat to three-dimensional states. Process transparency is embedded in the methodology itself.”

Scalability is addressed through adaptability. KnitForm+ is currently a research and design framework, not a product line. Its logic can be applied across furniture, interiors, and spatial design contexts, but requires collaboration with industrial knitting environments. The work is therefore scalable in principle, but intentionally not simplified into ready-made typologies.

Performance is defined through behaviour rather than comfort claims. The knitted structures demonstrate controlled flexibility, compression, and deformation. In pieces such as the inflatable knitted seat developed with TextielLab in Tilburg, the textile regulates volume and pressure through stitch construction alone. The trade-off is clear: these systems demand precise machine control and deep material understanding, but in return they reduce the need for secondary construction layers.

Within the wider industry context, KnitForm+ challenges the separation between textile design and product engineering. It positions knitting as a tool for structural problem-solving, not surface styling. For furniture designers, textile developers, and manufacturers, it suggests a shift from textiles as coverings to textiles as frameworks.

KnitForm+ does not claim to optimise production or solve sustainability through material substitution. Its contribution is more fundamental. It proposes that textiles can be active construction systems, capable of shaping form, behaviour, and function directly.

For Jeanne Mora, success is not measured in product replication, but in establishing knitting as a structural design discipline with industrial relevance. KnitForm+ is less about what knitting looks like, and more about what knitting can do.

WEBSITEIG: jeannemora_LINKEDIN

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by Chantal Graeff

RETRAKT - SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

RETRAKT: From Circular Ambition to Operational Reality

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

19. January 2026

RETRAKT is not a new material, fibre, or fabric system. What makes it different is more fundamental: it is a research-based transformation framework designed to help textile and apparel companies actually implement circular economy requirements inside day-to-day operations. At a time when circularity is becoming mandatory under EU legislation, RETRAKT focuses on the gap most companies struggle with: translating regulation into workable processes across design, sourcing, production, and data management.

Developed as part of the research project “Resilient Transformation Management for the Circular Economy in the Textile Industry”, RETRAKT addresses circularity as a socio-technical challenge, not a purely technical one. Its core innovation lies in combining product compliance management, resilience engineering, and employee-centred process design to help companies shift from linear to circular value creation in a structured, realistic way.

“Performance, in this context, is measured by organisational resilience. RETRAKT applies resilience engineering to help employees anticipate, monitor, respond to, and learn from complex and changing requirements.”

Rather than making sustainability claims, RETRAKT starts with regulatory facts. New EU textile legislation, including requirements linked to the EU Textile Strategy 2030, will make circular design, transparency, and traceability legally binding. RETRAKT systematically analyses these laws and translates them into concrete tasks for companies, from material selection and design decisions to supplier communication and data documentation.

Compliance is treated as the backbone of circularity, not an afterthought. Therefore, traceability within RETRAKT is approached through process transparency rather than labels. The project develops methods to document workflows, responsibilities, and decision paths inside companies, supported by a planned Digital Cooperation Platform. This platform is intended to support collaboration across international value chains and to prepare companies for future requirements such as the Digital Product Passport.

In terms of scalability, RETRAKT is not a lab experiment but a practice-oriented research project running from 2025 to 2028, implemented directly within partner companies from the textile and apparel industry. Its scalability lies in its transferability: the procedures, tools, and methods developed are designed to be adapted by other companies and, in the longer term, potentially by other industries facing similar regulatory pressure.

Performance, in this context, is measured by organisational resilience. RETRAKT applies resilience engineering to help employees anticipate, monitor, respond to, and learn from complex and changing requirements. This human-centred approach recognises that circularity will only work if people inside companies are enabled to manage uncertainty and complexity, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

RETRAKT positions itself clearly within the wider industry shift away from voluntary sustainability towards mandatory circular compliance. It is most relevant to brands, manufacturers, and suppliers who recognise that future competitiveness will depend not just on better materials, but on better systems.

Success for RETRAKT is not a single product outcome. It is the creation of a repeatable, resilient model for circular transformation that companies can realistically use.

WEBSITE

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by Chantal Graeff

MATERIA FUTURA - SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

MATERIA FUTURA: Reclaiming Sensory Desire in Bio-Based Materials

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

18. January 2026

Materia Futura is not proposing a new bio-material category, nor a finished commercial textile. What distinguishes the project is its design-led investigation into the emotional and aesthetic dimensions of bio-based materials, an area often sidelined in sustainability discourse. Founded by Alessia Pasquini and Beatriz Sandini, Materia Futura asks a direct question: why are sustainable materials still expected to look raw, muted, or purely functional?

Developed as a design research project in early 2025, Materia Futura explores how biomaterials can engage the senses through shimmer, iridescence, surface depth, and visual movement. Rather than treating these qualities as superficial, the project positions them as critical to human connection and long-term material adoption. Its first outcomes were presented at Dutch Design Week 2025 as part of the exhibition Basic Instinct: Making–With. The first phase of the research was developed in collaboration Paulina Martina, a digital designer, who worked on the virtual reality component. Part of that initial phase focused on creating a connection between the physical materials and the virtual world. You will find more info about this aspect on the Materia Futura website.

“Sustainability should not only be responsible, but also desirable – able to shimmer, glow, and connect with our senses.”

The work combines bio-based material experimentation with traditional craft techniques, using hands-on processes to push beyond the visual language typically associated with sustainable design. Effects such as chromatic shifts, moiré patterns, and layered textures are explored not as decoration, but as inherent material expressions inspired by natural phenomena. While earlier phases of the project investigated links between physical materials and digital or immersive environments, the designers are currently reassessing how and whether these components will continue in future iterations.

Materia Futura is firmly in a research and exploratory phase. The materials developed are not yet positioned for immediate industrial scale or collection integration. Instead, the project functions as a provocation and a testing ground, relevant to designers, material developers, and brands interested in expanding how sustainability is perceived, communicated, and desired.

In the wider material landscape, Materia Futura challenges the assumption that responsible materials must be visually restrained to be credible. Its contribution lies in reframing sustainability as something that can be sensory, expressive, and culturally resonant, without denying its biological or ethical foundations.

For Pasquini and Sandini, success is not defined by a single material outcome, but by opening space for a richer, more emotionally literate future for bio-based design.

WEBSITEIG: materia_futuraa

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by Chantal Graeff

THREADED PROTOCOLS - SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

THREADED PROTOCOLS:

When Weaving Becomes Computation Again

Explore these innovative projects at the Sustainable Innovations Forum in the Keyhouse in Hall 2

17. January 2026

Threaded Protocols is not a textile innovation in the commercial sense, nor a digital tool disguised as craft. What makes the work distinct is its material investigation into how computational logic originates in textile practice and what is lost when those logics are abstracted into opaque technological systems.

Developed by artist and researcher Floor Berkhout, Threaded Protocols explores the structural relationship between weaving and computing. Both rely on binary decisions, pattern execution, and logical sequencing. Historically, the loom was the first computer. Threaded Protocols returns to this origin, using textile-making to expose the physical, gestural nature of computation that contemporary digital infrastructures have largely hidden.

Berkhout’s practice operates as a critical technical practice, working through craft methodologies to understand how protocols function materially. In Threaded Protocols, each crossing of threads becomes a binary operation: in front or behind, zero or one. Meaning emerges slowly, through repetition and attention, rather than speed or optimisation. This slowness is deliberate. It draws from perma-computing principles, which question the inevitability of fast, extractive technological progress and its influence on both digital systems and the textile industry.

The project also foregrounds the gendered history of both textile labour and computation, from 19th-century weaving rooms to the women who worked as “computers” in the mid-20th century. By re-embedding computation in the hands, Threaded Protocols seeks to reclaim agency that has been stripped away through industrialisation and black-box technologies.

WEBSITEIG: floor.berkhout

Threaded Protocols is presented as process-driven research and interactive installation, not as a scalable product or material solution. Its relevance lies in how it reframes technology as something made, touched, and shaped by human choice, rather than an abstract, neutral system.

For designers, technologists, and researchers, Threaded Protocols offers a reminder that systems which appear precise and objective are always political, always designed, and always traceable back to material decisions. In a landscape dominated by efficiency, Berkhout’s work insists on another value: the right to build meaning slowly.

The detailed explorer finds a bonus: her work is also touching theme’s of emancipation, gender-equality, historic manipulation…

Any input you think is helpful to create a dedicated article about your project:
https://materialprotocols.site/presskit/
https://materialprotocols.site/research&&notes/

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by Chantal Graeff

Living Matter: Bio-Luxury for Future Materials

Living Matter: Bio-Luxury for Future Materials

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

31. August 2025

Luxury has always been a contradiction. It’s admired for its craft and allure, yet criticised for its excess. Living Matter takes this tension and turns it into a question: what if luxury wasn’t about being rare or exclusive, but about being responsible and creative?

Indigo, a colour with a lot of history, is the main focus of this project. Denim has always meant strength and durability, and its roughness is linked to work and usefulness. In this case, indigo is used to provoke. Biomaterials like Indigo Fur, Indigo BioLeather, and Indigo Veil change the roughness of denim into something soft, light, and impossibly elegant. These materials are made to feel high-end, but they are also made to change, age, and eventually return to the earth.

The process uses marine biopolymers, plant fibres, and even charcoal waste, which are mixed with cotton and natural indigo dyes. The results are more than just surfaces; they are shaped by techniques like folding, pleating, and fur-crafting. They feel alive, with both a scientific and a craft-like touch. Every piece tells a story about what happens when old and new come together.

“By rethinking luxury as a nature-driven, craftsmanship-based concept, the project pioneers sustainable luxury.”
Shushanik Droshakiryan

What stands out is how beautiful these materials are without any shame. Sustainable design is too often shown in muted colours, as if restraint is the only way to show responsibility. Living Matter has a different point of view. Indigo here is strong and bright, with textures that are rich, sensory, and very appealing. It doesn’t agree that taking care of the planet means giving up style.

Luxury sets the tone for the wider industry, shaping what people desire and why they engage with fashion at all. Living Matter challenges this influence, urging a shift away from extraction toward stewardship redefining bio-based materials not as compromise, but as the ultimate expression of desirability.

Presented at the September 2025 edition of Munich Fabric Start’s Sustainable Innovations forum, the project will make its case in the right place thanks to the kind collaboration with OFFICINA +39 as supplier of RECYCROMTM RTD OCEAN dye as well as EU COTTON who provided the raw cotton used in this project. Pushing boundaries and spotlighting visions of fashion’s future, it has the potential to reframe bio-based materials not as substitutes or compromises, but as the new height of aspiration.

H2 | SI

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by Chantal Graeff

BIOTEXFUTURE: How to Make Textiles from Fossils

BIOTEXFUTURE: How to Make Textiles from Fossils

30. August 2025

One of fashion’s biggest contradictions is that it relies on fossil fuels. Polyester, nylon, and acrylic make up most of the world’s fibres, which means that most clothes today start out as crude oil. adidas and RWTH Aachen University are leading the German project BIOTEXFUTURE, which wants to end that dependence.

The program is a group of businesses and universities working together to find scalable, bio-based alternatives. It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Part of the SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS forum at Munich Fabric start, three main projects will be featured:

  • CircWool: a process that uses a solvent to restore wool fibres without lowering their quality.
  • BioPETex: a bio-based polyester that works just as well as regular PET.
  • BioCushion: a type of spacer fabric that can be recycled and used in shoes and clothes. It is both strong and circular.

These projects are not meant to be one-time tests; they are meant to be useful in the real world. Adding them to the forum ties speculative design ideas to a long history of applied science. It reminds us that we need both creativity and infrastructure to make the switch to sustainable textiles.

BioCushion

BioPEtex

BioPEtex

BioPEtex

CircWool

BIOTEXFUTURE is holding the right vision to transform the textile value chain.”
adidas Future Team

The message is clear for fashion and textiles: greenwashing can’t hide the fact that we depend on oil. We need to change the way things are built, and bio-based fibres are a big part of that. The good news is that the technology is available, partnerships are forming, and interest is growing.

Petrochemistry has defined textiles for the last 100 years. But projects like BIOTEXFUTURE show that a new era is coming, one where performance, style, and scale are no longer tied to oil but to renewable innovation.

CircWool

CircWool

CircWool

Visit BIOTEXFUTURE H2 | SI

BIOTEXFUTURE

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by Chantal Graeff

Wetlands Matters – by Marc Wijkmans

Wetlands Matters – by Marc Wijkmans

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

29. August 2025

In the Netherlands, where land and water are always at odds with each other, design often has to work with ecology. Marc Wijkmans Studio “Wetlands” takes this conversation into textiles, treating fabrics not as neutral surfaces but as active participants that can help landscapes grow.

Wijkman’s idea came from a simple but important observation: animals carry seeds across ecosystems in their fur. He made a fabric that purposely catches and spreads seeds by imitating this natural process. The material is made of wool, sodium alginate, and linseed oil, and it doesn’t have the smooth, perfect look of regular fabrics. Instead, its value comes from its flaws, how it can get stuck, carry things, and help the process of re-wilding continue. This approach goes against what people think about outdoor clothing.

“Seeds stick to fur. Building on this, I came up with the idea to give the material a fur-like surface.” 
Marc Wijkmans

Making the material

As most of us know, performance fabrics today are largely synthetic-engineered to be strong and water-resistant, yet infamous for shedding microplastics. Wetlands Matters challenges this conventional notion of “functionality.” Here, performance is redefined: not about keeping people dry, but about serving the ecological needs of a site.

Tested in the Hemelrijkse Waard nature reserve, the textile demonstrates that protection can be mutual – between wearer and landscape. From this emerges a clear lesson for the fashion and textile industries: materials must be rethought entirely. What if fabrics were designed to collaborate with their surroundings rather than resist them? What if impermanence and biodegradability were not flaws, but essential virtues for a sustainable future?

All in all, Wetlands Matters doesn’t say that it has a solution that is ready to sell. It works as a provocation instead: a reminder that the future of textiles may be less about how long they last and how well they work in the narrow sense and more about how they can help landscapes grow quietly and steadily.

H2 | SI

Repairing the material

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by Chantal Graeff

Heliotex – Studio Pauline van Dongen

Heliotex – Studio Pauline van Dongen

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

28. August 2025

Textiles have always covered our bodies, but what if they could also power the things around us? Heliotex (formerly known as Suntex), from designer Pauline van Dongen, is a challenge to what people think fabric can do.

Heliotex is basically a way to combine organic photovoltaics with lightweight, flexible fabrics. The result is sunshades and canopies that generate energy and look good at the same time. These fabrics move, fold, and breathe with their surroundings, unlike rigid solar panels. They think of renewable energy not as something that needs to be hidden away, but as something that is beautiful, soft, and fits in perfectly with the rest of the world.

“We focus on outdoor applications like textile facades, festival tents, and shade structures… Of course, we also foresee indoor applications like curtains and sun shading.”
Pauline van Dongen

The fact that Simon Angel included the project in this season’s SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS forum puts it in a bigger story: textiles are no longer passive. They are tools for making big changes in the system. Heliotex shows how fabrics can go beyond traditional categories by working at the intersection of design, architecture, and energy. It is similar to Wetlands Matters and Plantfur.

The effects of van Dongen’s work on the fashion and textile industries will be huge. The textile industry can grow if textiles can collect energy. Sustainability stops being about doing less harm and starts being about giving more value, like comfort, beauty, and clean energy all at once.

The lesson is practical but lofty: sustainability should feel like a part of everyday life, not something that is added on. Heliotex shows that renewable energy can be touchable, welcoming, and even luxurious. This is a call for people who work in fashion and textiles to think of fabrics not just as things we wear, but also as the buildings we live in.

H2 | SI

PAULINE VAN DOGNEN

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by Chantal Graeff

Atelier Dasha Tsapenko's MYC_Couture

Atelier Dasha Tsapenko's MYC_Couture

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

27. August 2025

People have long praised couture for its ability to shock. But what if fashion didn’t just shock people with its looks but also made them think about what it was made of? Atelier Dasha Tsapenko’s ongoing project, MYC_Couture, is based on that idea. Instead of making clothes, she grows them.

Tsapenko has made clothes out of fungi, hemp, and flax; living collaborations between the designer and the organism. The coats and gowns that came out of this unusual partnership are dramatic and sculptural. They look like couture fantasy, but their biology is what makes them new. The garments grow back, break down, and eventually go back to the earth. Tsapenko has introduced the new idea of “bioluxury”, which is a model that accepts change and that things don’t last, instead of fighting against change.

“Textures and materials are not produced; they grow.”
 Dasha Tsapenko

This vision is not a gimmick or a small test. MYC_Couture, understands that a shift in worldview from garments as static objects to garments as part of ecological cycles isn’t about keeping things the same, it’s about celebrating change, growth, and coming back.

No stranger to events like Dutch Design Week, Copenhagen Fashion Week, and now at Munich Fabric Start, you will find MYC_Couture housed in the SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS space. There she hopes to start a conversation about changing the way fashion and ecology are connected. Her lesson is both simple and radical: sustainability cannot be achieved by efficiency tweaks alone.

H2 | SI

ATELIER DASHA TSAPENKO

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by Chantal Graeff

Plantfur – by Studio iFOCUS

Plantfur – by Studio iFocus 

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS

26. August 2025

Peatlands, which are often called the “lungs of the earth,”, are delicate ecosystems that are under a lot of stress. These carbon-rich soils in the Netherlands are at risk of collapsing because of centuries of draining and intensive farming. When they do, they release emissions into the air. This environmental crisis is not only a call to fix things, for designer Iris Veentjer; it is also a chance to rethink the future of materials.

Veentjer’s practice has turned her attention to cattails, a plant that grows well in waterlogged soils and has the potential to change both landscapes and textiles. Plantfur, a surface material made from the cigar-shaped seed heads of the cattail, is the main focus of this research. These spikes are usually thrown away as agricultural waste, but they are collected before they spread too much and turned into panels that look like fur. Each cigar has its own size, so when they are put together, they make striated surfaces that are naturally beautiful. Not only is the material a more environmentally friendly alternative to animal fur and petroleum-based synthetics, but it also gives farmers a crop that helps reduce emissions.

“Harvesting cattail cigars earlier prevents their invasive spread and transforms waste into value.”

Iris Veentjer

The fact that SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS forum is featuring the project this season shows how important it is. Plantfur shows that sustainability can mean more than just doing less harm. Plantfur makes important points for the fashion and textile industries. What if wetlands were used to grow fur instead of factory farms? What if farming worked with climate resilience instead of against it?

Plantfur doesn’t just replace old materials; it makes a new way to use them based on ecological reciprocity. This is a very important lesson to learn. People won’t just judge the textiles of the future by how they feel on the skin; they’ll also judge them by how they work in ecosystems. Veentjer’s work shows that luxury and sustainability don’t have to be at odds with each other. They can be redefined together with materials that are both beautiful and good for the environment.

H2 | SI

STUDIO iFOCUS

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by Chantal Graeff