Can Today’s Dinner Become Tomorrow’s Motorcycle Jacket?
VISION: Use waste from seafood shells and old coffee grounds to create a leather alternative with minimal environmental impact.
TEAM: Uyen Tran
SCHOOL: Parsons School of Design, 2020
For decades, industry has been searching for greener, less expensive, vegan alternatives to leather. Tômtex is a leather-like biomaterial that can be literally pulled out of the trash: it’s made from crustacean shells (“Tôm” is Vietnamese for “shrimp”) and dyed with coffee grounds.
Tômtex is a new and intriguing way to upcycle the more than 17 million tons of seafood waste and coffee grounds that end up in the world’s landfills every year. It also replaces the heavy environmental cost of leather processing, which includes not only harsh chemicals but large amounts of water.
All of this is part of making fashion more honest about its environmental impact, says designer Uyen Tran, who believes that creating local, closed-loop systems for materials could transform the industry—and the world. “If we give the technology enough time to develop, and enough time to be applied to the current manufacturing process, maybe we’ll bring down the negative impact on the environment—which is what I’m concerned about the most.”
Since taking part in the Biodesign Challenge, Tran has won multiple awards for the Tômtex project—including the Surface Design Creative Promise Award, The Mills Fabrica’s Techstyle Grand Prize, and Council of Fashion Designers of America’s K11 Innovation Design Scholar Award.
