TômTex, a developer of bio-based materials, collaborated with New York fashion designer Peter Do to create two looks for his Spring/Summer 2023 collection at New York Fashion Week. TômTex was presented at Peter Do's Spring/Summer 2023 show, both consisting of glossy wide-legged pants and crew-neck undershirts, one look in a camel hue and the other in a black finish.
These garments are made from TômTex's "new non-woven biofiber," a 100% biodegradable material derived from shrimp and mushroom food waste that has the look and feel of leather. The undershirt is embossed with a subtle crosshatched pattern reminiscent of polyethylene-coated piping tape, while the pants are kept smooth but feature stitched paneling details.
TômTex's material substitutes are made from chitosan, a derivative of biopolymer, a polymer produced from natural sources - chitin. The company works with a Vietnamese supplier to collect shell and mushroom waste from which it extracts chitosan biopolymers.
The collaboration stems from TômTex founder Uyen Tran, a designer who says that since Tran first developed bio-based materials and founded TômTex in 2020, the brand has made dramatic improvements to the material's properties and composition to improve its strength and aesthetics.
"Last year we made significant progress in improving the mechanical properties, aesthetic properties and marketability of our materials, for example by cleverly adapting our material formulations we were able to more than triple their absolute fracture strength without adding any plastic, in fact nothing from a fossil source, 100% bio-based", she said.
Likewise, they changed their processes and formulations to improve the feel of the material, adding softness and silky smoothness, and even creating a suede-like texture.
Tran said the search for green materials is becoming increasingly urgent, as an estimated 92 million tons of textiles end up in landfills each year, and laundry alone results in 500,000 tons of plastic microfibers being released into the ocean each year. "It is becoming increasingly clear that the climate crisis is not limited to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, but extends to the material life cycle: for example, the prevalence of microplastics.
TômTex explained that the brand is working on expanding and scaling up its production in order to further collaborate with fashion brands such as Peter Do. We plan to build strong partnerships with designers who value sustainability, fairness and craftsmanship in their products. We plan to expand our facility to Vietnam in early 2024 for mass production so we can offer more recycled materials to the fashion market.
In 2021, the French luxury brand Hermès, in collaboration with biomaterials company MycoWorks, has replaced the Victoria shopping bag with a leather substitute grown from mycelium. Berlin design students Lobke Beckfeld and Johanna Hehemeyer-Cürten have developed a peel bag that dissolves in water and can be used to fertilize plants once they are no longer needed.
