Seaweed Fabrics for Fashion Design. A Field Research Experience

Abstract

The essay addresses the reasons why fashion design is manifesting an increasing interest in the marine environment as a context where to identify new materials for fashion, focusing on the particular case of seaweed. Through a field research, which involved MA fashion students at Università Iuav di Venezia, it is possible to demonstrate how an object such as seaweed fabric is not only a response to the need for new sustainable materials for fashion, but it is also interpretable through the framework of new materialism in a posthuman perspective. These fabrics, perceived as vibrant, represent a stimulus to redefine fashion design and its relations with environment, territories, people, and bodies. In the experimentation with seaweed, nature becomes raw material for constructing aesthetic and cultural imagery in a multispecies landscape.