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Next-gen materials are in this season. After years of materials startups announcing technology breakthroughs and brands dropping proof-of-concept products or capsule collections that go nowhere, the last month has felt different.
A handful of runway shows in New York, London and Paris for the Spring/Summer 2025 season featured recycled textiles, seaweed fibres and mycelium, among others, while major players like Burberry and Ganni have begun selling — to regular customers, not in a limited run or an exclusive sale — products made with biotech fibres and other material innovations designed to slash fashion’s environmental footprint.
At the annual Future Fabrics Expo, material innovation startups shared the challenges keeping them from growth and what gives them hope.
This marks a change from months and years past. The adoption of next-gen materials in fashion has not only been slow, it also suffered a major setback earlier this year with the bankruptcy of Renewcell and the worry that spread through the industry as a result. (Renewcell has since found a buyer, and now goes by the name of its trademark fibre Circulose.) It’s also a necessary change given that raw materials account for a majority of a brand’s total emissions — brands cannot meet their sustainability goals without changing their materials.
Whether the materials that launched this and last month will endure beyond the runway or the capsule collection is, in large part, up to the brands. It’s easy enough for a brand to get its hands on a small amount of material to do a limited production run, but to produce at scale requires a material to be available at scale, and that is a larger challenge that requires a delicate dance between not just the brand and the startup, but suppliers too.
Here, we round up what we saw during fashion month and — in greater numbers — what has launched off the runway in just the last couple weeks.
Christian Siriano x Circ
Circ, which makes silk-like Lyocell from recycled textiles — it also supplies materials to Zara, and was the startup behind last year’s famed Mara Hoffman dress — made its runway debut during Christian Siriano’s show in New York. The SS25 line features a trench coat and a wide-leg pant with an accompanying bra top. The garments are currently available for purchase (made to order) on Christian Siriano’s direct-to-consumer site, along with the rest of the collection.
Karoline Vitto x Seacell by Pyratex
The black, navy and blush pieces threaded throughout Karoline Vitto’s latest collection were made from Seacell, a fibre created by next-gen materials company Pyratex using “responsibly sourced” seaweed combined with wood pulp. Vitto says the material is ready to go into production if needed.
Patrick McDowell x Forager by Ecovative and PurePalette dyes by Octarine
Ecovative’s mycelium leather alternative Forager made up 4 per cent of Patrick McDowell’s latest collection, with styles ready to enter production if buyers are interested, says McDowell, who runs their own brand alongside working as sustainability creative director at Pinko. They also worked with PurePalette bio-based dyes from Octarine, which was important for McDowell because petrochemical dyes often undermine the sustainability benefits of the next-gen materials they work with. “Fashion week is about showcasing new ideas and so it’s always felt natural to me that the shows should highlight creative and innovative ideas, materials included,” they say.
Burberry x Brewed Protein by Spiber
The British fashion house known for its outerwear has released a scarf made with Brewed Protein fibre, a lab-grown fibre developed by Japanese biotech company Spiber. It’s produced via fermentation of ingredients it says are plant-based and renewable. Unlike many product debuts, Burberry has launched the scarf directly into its permanent collection, with plans to explore uses in other soft accessories in the future.
Pangaia x Mirum by Natural Fiber Welding
Natural Fiber Welding has launched its leather-like Mirum, which is made from petroleum-free ingredients like clay and natural rubber, in an impressive range of products to date. The latest is the Gaia Bag from cult favourite label Pangaia, which also uses Climate Beneficial cotton as a backing for the material and worked with innovative manufacturer Veshin Factory to produce the bag.
Mozhdeh Matin x Shringa
Lima-based designer Mozhdeh Matin’s latest campaign showcases a vegan leather made from natural rubber that’s sent through a vegetable tanning process. The rubber is extracted from the hevea brasiliensis tree in the Amazon, applied to cotton fabric and then dried. Matin collaborates with a communal enterprise, the label says, to ensure “sustainable rubber extraction in Madre de Dios [Peru], providing secure jobs and better livelihoods for local communities”.
Ganni x Circulose, Celium, Oleatex, Cycora, Pelinova and Simplifyber
The Danish brand has used its Fabrics of the Future initiative as a platform to test and scale innovative materials since its launch in 2019. The latest show in Paris featured a number of new materials all at once to stand in for three of the most common components of clothing and accessories: polyester, cotton blends and leather. The collection featured Circulose (the recycled fibre from the company formerly known as Renewcell); Celium, a cellulosic material from Polybion made by feeding bacteria with “agroindustrial fruit waste”; Oleatex, a leather-like material made from olive industry waste; Cycora, a textile-to-textile recycled polyester from startup Ambercycle; Pelinova, which mixes pre-consumer recycled leather with Tencel; and Simplifyber, a “bio-fibre that can be moulded to form the textured upper of a shoe”.
Ganni already has ready-to-wear pieces from previous collections made with Oleatex, Cycora and Circulose. (The Circulose used so far has featured in denim; SS25 marks the launch of knitwear styles made with Circulose.) Pelinova was introduced in the Slouchy boot in its SS24 collection and is being expanded to other shoe styles for SS25. Celium products from the runway are not commercially available yet — the brand is still working to refine the commercial version and hopes to launch in 2025 — but all the other next-gen materials featured will go into commercial production.
Stella McCartney x Kelsun by Keel Labs
During her Paris show in September, Stella McCartney featured a vest made from Kelsun, a seaweed-based fibre by Keel Labs, a startup specialising in “aquaculture-based technologies”. Kelsun is made from alginate, a biopolymer found in seaweed, that is made to resemble the natural fibres consumers are already familiar with. A spokesperson declined to share Stella McCartney’s production plans for the design, but Keel Labs’s founder says scale is “on the horizon”. (The material also featured in a shirt from US brand Outerknown, which released a Kelsun version of its Blanket Shirt in September. It produced 150, which they say sold out quickly.)
Adore Me x Ever Dye
For a Halloween capsule, lingerie brand Adore Me partnered with textile dyeing startup Ever Dye to launch two sleepwear sets made with a pigment technology that relies on ambient temperatures — meaning it can, potentially, “dramatically” reduce the energy consumption and water usage involved in conventional textile dyeing. The company declined to share specifics, but says that Ever Dye’s technology will be used in other products heading into the future.
Bella Webb contributed reporting to this article.
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