A Fashion student from Stratford-upon-Avon College is exploring innovative approaches to clothing by creating biomaterials for her final college project.
Jess Barnes, 20 from Evesham, is in her final year of the Level 3 Fashion & Textiles course. She has shown great taste when it comes to sustainable fashion by using food to create sheets of material for her garments.
Exploring the theme of utopia vs dystopia, Jess examined the darker side of technological advancement through her designs, while balancing this with a highly positive, eco friendly approach to production.
Every aspect of her creation has been sustainably considered. The main material involved is biomaterial, created by experimenting with a range of foods to find the one that worked best. After eight weeks of experimenting and testing strawberry tops, bananas, leek, kale, potato, lemon, coffee and white chocolate, Jess found the best result was using orange peel and coffee grounds mixed with Agar Agar and Glycerine.
She also created prints on scrap material to form other sections of the gown, and the print pattern came from one of her test subject’s mould growth.
The final element of the design was integrating technology in the piece which she did sustainably; reusing old wires from her grandfather’s work as an Electrician.
Jess’s creation captured during two recent photoshoots look stunning!
Jess has always been conscious of her impact environmentally and has been vegetarian since the age of 10. She is pleased to be creating work with an eco-conscious edge: “I really wanted to highlight the message: Be aware of the future. It’s in our best interest to think of the impact we have on our environment.”
Fashion Lecturer, Louisa Figus, is delighted with Jess’s innovation: “Jess has created some amazing biomaterial samples through personal research, independent exploration and perseverance in experimenting with new materials and processes to create such a wide diversity of material containing everything from kale to coffee to make a type of leather look fabric that she can use in her project.
The course is designed to introduce and develop the students’ understanding of the importance of sustainability. This is achieved through a variety of workshops on environmental and ethical consideration. We have also engaged in trips to universities to take part on biomaterial workshops and hope to do this again next year.”
Jess’s final piece will be part of two photoshoots and an exhibition. Once she has completed her course, she plans to start working as a Freelance Fashion Designer and Creator. To see some of her work, check out her business page on Instagram here.
