TFRC members and bio textiles

More TFRC member's have been appearing internationally at conferences and events recently. Suzanne Lee has been to the annual TED Conference in the US where she presented her BioCouture work as a new TED Fellow, where her talk has made it onto the TED Talk's homepage - a rare privilege for new Fellows!

Titled 'Grow Your Own Clothes', Suzanne's talk described her process of growing microbial-cellulose to make garments. There is also an interview with Suzanne here on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

TFRC member Carole Collet will be speaking at Clothing Without Cloth, on 26th May, a Test Lab event in Rotterdam. Increasingly, material research in clothing and fashion is leading us down the path of synthetic and organic explorations to enhance garments by means of novel manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing, rapid prototyping and bio-couture. This event aims to explore some of these new practices and includes Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma, who explores local materials and production with Dutch wool, and Pauline van Dongen who has created some 'printed shoes' in collaboration with Freedom of Creation.

The event will be streamed live here.

Top 50 to Top 100: TFRC Ties

Finding and celebrating the connections between TFRC members and their work is what this space is about and this week we take a look at Suzanne Lee and Becky Earley's work.

Suzanne Lee's Biocouture project has just been voted as number 15 in the Top 50 inventions of the year by TIME magazine, and has received 22,000 'favourite' votes from readers of the website. Other fashion and textile related innovations included in the list are Manuel Torre's Fabrican spray on fabric, Maison Martin Margiela Artisanal coat made from 29,000 plastic price-tag fasteners and Wool Fillers, a DIY wool felting kit for filling moth holes on sweaters, by Dutch designer Heleen Klopper. The focus on sustainability is clear from TIME’s choice of inventions, as the chosen ideas offer re-use, repair and dematerialisation solutions. As TIME magazine say about BioCouture,".. it’s a heckuva lot kinder to the planet than polyester".

And on the subject of polyester and sustainable design... Another TFRC textile project, 'Top 100' is Becky Earley’s venture, a ten-year ‘slow’ fashion project, producing upcycled polyester shirts.

Nine of the shirts are currently on tour with Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution, curated by Helen Carnac, and another shirt was recently acquired and included in the Eco Fashion: Going Green show at the Museum at FIT in New York, which finished last month. Other shirts from the series can be found in the archives of the Museum of Art at RSID, USA.