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Vietnamese designer Uyen Tran’s commitment to improving the fashion industry started long before she found herself in design studios working for the likes of Ralph Lauren and Peter Do. She traces her interest in sustainability back to her childhood.
“Growing up in a coastal city like Da Nang, I was immersed in a culture of resourcefulness. My mother instilled the value of buying secondhand clothing — which is often discarded by Western countries — and repairing items rather than throwing them away,” Tran says. “This contrast heightened my awareness of the environmental impact of fast fashion and motivated me to seek sustainable alternatives.”
That quest turned into what is now material innovation startup TômTex. In a crowded category, TômTex has stood out, with some observers believing it could deliver what fashion has been chasing: a viable leather alternative that is high in quality, cost effective and free of plastic and other petroleum-based chemicals. And she has the momentum to suggest her technology has legs.
Last month, the Brooklyn startup announced a collaboration with Sky High Farm Universe, a New York-based mission-led fashion label, and ocean conservation organisation Parley. The companies say they came together over a shared goal of combatting plastic pollution. Debuting TômTex’s first-ever ready-to-wear collection, Sky High Farm produced a capsule collection — also featuring material startups Ponda, Bananatex and Nature Coatings — which includes a bomber jacket, a puffer jacket and denim pieces. These garments, which Sky High Farm is working to get to market in the “near future”, showcase the versatility and wearability of the bio-based vegan leather.
It’s the latest in a series of partnerships between TômTex and leading contemporary and unconventional designers, a strategy that diverges from that of many innovation startups where pilots with well-known designers like Stella McCartney or international giants such as H&M and Zara have led the way. “Collaborating with designers like Dauphinette, Luar, Peter Do and others has allowed us to explore the material’s potential and push the boundaries,” says Tran. More are in the pipeline, with brands including Collina Strada, Kim Shui and Allina Liu, and Tran says production will begin after fashion month, with the first commercial product set to launch spring 2025.
Cracking leather
While there is no shortage in leather alternatives that have entered the market over the last decade, many of these are made with petrochemicals that, while they add durability and longevity, tend to cancel out much of the potential environmental benefit of switching from an animal — and carbon-intensive — material to a plant-derived alternative.
To impart that durability in a more sustainable way, Tran and her team turned to nature for inspiration; they found it in shell seafood waste and mushrooms, she says. Both ingredients are rich in a material called chitosan, which is a derivative of chitin, and the second most abundant, naturally occurring biopolymer on earth. It gets extracted from the outer shell of organisms with exoskeletons and from the cell walls of fungi, and is used by TômTex in a process that emphasises circular functions and highlights chitosan’s natural capacity for tissue regeneration.
TômTex’s Brooklyn studio acts as more of a scientific lab than a traditional textile factory. When Vogue Business visited in August, the space was peppered with buckets and prototypes that were just about to be returned to designers ahead of New York Fashion Week. Tran and her co-founder Ross McBee have created and patented two materials: Series WS, which is derived from shell seafood waste, and Series M, derived from mushrooms. The materials look and function the same way, both non-woven and with a sleek feel, but Series M allows TômTex to offer a completely plant-based option.
The process from food waste to runway begins with the chitosan being dissolved into a water-based liquid form, or a ‘dope’. Pigments can be added to the liquid blend, using natural minerals like mica. The dope is then dried to form sheets, which become the finished material for a designer to develop a garment or product with. The texture is controlled using moulds in rolled forms, which can result in myriad finishes — pebbled, smooth, embossed.
This flexibility and versatility are what enable TômTex to be able to work with a wide range of brands and products. “Unlike conventional leather, TômTex’s alternative begins as a liquid, allowing it to be easily manipulated into limitless patterns and designs, such as the marbled effect reminiscent of prosciutto fat,” she says. After the steps of material production are complete, the result is a biofabric that can become a chic evening dress or an accessory — like the ‘prosciutto’ bag or the thermochromic ‘lampshade’ mini dress that Tran helped ready-to-wear brand Dauphinette bring to life.
“The environmental challenges in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where climate change has led to an increase in shrimp farming and subsequent shell waste, inspired me to explore chitosan,” says Tran, explaining that people have turned more to shrimp because rising sea levels and temperatures have compromised rice yields, a key staple food in the region.
She spent time at New York’s Parsons School of Design developing the material, creating 200 experimental versions before she came up with the prototype that emerged from her MFA (Master of Fine Arts) course. “Initially, I was inspired by cellulose-based materials like cotton, hemp, bamboo and modal. This curiosity led me to discover chitosan,” she says, which is abundant, “but also uniquely soluble in water” — eliminating the need for harmful solvents in its processing. “It was then that I realised the immense potential of TômTex to address both waste management and environmental impact.”
Dauphinette founder and designer Olivia Cheng implements the most unexpected — often recovered — objects into her designs, from preserved florals to vintage spoons. Her pieces adopt a reworked philosophy, so Cheng embraces and amplifies TômTex’s resourceful vision in her own way.
“With TômTex, there’s so much room for creative exploration. I think any designer should be excited about the prospect of incorporating these materials. In our three seasons working together, Uyen and her team have made so many of my wildest dreams come true. When we were discussing an Autumn/Winter 2024 collaboration, I told them that I felt like this collection was going to be very ‘carnal’ and ‘feral’, and so we decided to create a marbled, meaty-looking material that was mushroom-based,” Cheng shares.
“I think a lot of people believe that textile innovation means creative compromise, but TômTex proves this untrue — their materials have enabled us to simultaneously expand our creative boundaries and further our sustainability commitments,” she continues, “my design ethos is simply ‘doing the most we can with what we already have’.”
Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada also expresses enthusiasm around the revolutionary prospects of TômTex’s biofabrics. Collina Strada’s core values of activism and ethical creation are ingrained into every technicolour piece the brand releases. “I always just wanted to make products I believed in. Capitalism is a tough one for me. I never wanted to be part of the problem. Creating garments with ethical manufacturing and sustainable elements has always been our number one priority. Collina Strada has always, and always will be, a brand that can speak about current events and topics and advocate to do the right thing,” Taymour says.
She elaborates upon the limitations that many biomaterials possess: “I have worked, in the past, with other companies’ mushroom leathers that I didn’t love. They would rip at the stitch lines and almost peel off the top layer, like paper. I’m super excited to work with Uyen’s mushroom leather alternative because it feels like everything I want from a fabric.”
Now, TômTex is looking for partners outside of fashion and still has challenges to tackle, including striking the right balance between durability and biodegradability. Tran is confident TômTex can achieve that and in the process deliver a larger message for the industry. “It’s possible to create high-performance products without compromising environmental integrity,” she says.
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