At the Warren Street Hotel on Thursday, ten designers showed clothes made from soybeans, fermented grains, orange peel and corn.
Each finalist received a 10,000 dollar stipend and a brief to use at least two innovative materials, with an emphasis on bio-based alternatives to animal-derived fibres.
Nicole Phelps of Vogue Runway argued that the constraint opened possibilities rather than closing them.
That claim is the crux of the category’s problem, since alternative materials have spent a decade being described as compromises.
The winner and two runners-up will be announced on October 20, and that decision will indicate which of these experiments reaches production.
The interesting shift is not that designers will use better materials, but that they now design for them from the first sketch.
