Living Matter: Bio-Luxury for Future Materials
SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS
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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