Leather made from flowers

February 1st, 2023

“Flaux” is a new leather-like, textile material that uses waste from commercially produced flowers as its main ingredient and dye. When Irene Purasachit was a design student at Aalto University in Finland, she began to reflect on the aftermath of wedding ceremonies in her home country of Thailand, where flowers ended up in trash piles […]

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Fluff Stuff

November 1st, 2022

Typha latifolia, or broadleaf cattail, grows in Finland’s peatlands. Photo: Petri Tapola When it comes to providing warmth, textile products are routinely filled with unsustainable filling materials such as down feathers or polyester fibers. Master’s degree students at Helsinki’s Aalto University, have created a process that replaces those textile fillings with a natural alternative while […]

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Sun-powered textiles

January 1st, 2022

In this prototype jacket from the Sun-Powered Textile Project a “porous” textile is laminated to commercially available solar cells, The energy-autonomous product can generate its own energy by using light as a renewable energy source. In addition to sunlight, it can also generate energy from artificial light. Photos: Anne Kinnunen. Researchers at Aalto University in […]

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