An experimental studio researching new uses for post-consumer textile fibre waste.
+ Creator | Studio Sarmite
+ Country | Germany
+ Colour | Post-consumer denim fibres
+ Challenge | How does colour live and change from one lifecycle to the next?
Pre-Loved bio-textile dyed with madder root and mallow blossoms
"It is the idea that materials are more than a resource – they carry a message and traces from the past….The message and the story of the material is a crucial part of all my projects. Once I started to work in this realm, I could not go back to conventional product design." Sarmite Polakova
Future Colour | Studio Sarmite
Studio Sarmite is a natural materials design and research studio, led by Latvian designer Sarmite Polakova. The studio work focuses on transforming fabric waste into new high-quality materials. The experimental research is blended with the manipulation of traditional design methods, each invented material has its own story and a new design language tailored to its specific end use.
Recycled post-consumer fibre colour research
Pre-Loved | Textile Waste
In collaboration with Mara Maizele, Studio Sarmite has developed and created ‘Pre-Loved’ a new bio-textile concept made of post-consumer textile waste. A unique production method turns mixed-blend inferior textile fibres into a sturdy bio-composite for future garment making. Their process skips the need for traditional textile recycling entirely. Instead, it emphasizes recyclability and aims to put a stop to cheap, ‘shoddy’ textile items ending up in landfill.
‘Pre-Loved’ is the sum of all fibres mixed together during the recycling process both natural and synthetic are blended together. The team believe that the leather-like material can actually be dissolved at the end of its life and the textile fibres repurposed for the next production cycle, offering us a new circular fibre economy, and destroying the need for raw virgin harvested fibre entirely.
Pre-Loved biotextile
“A survey commissioned by Sainsbury’s last spring found that 235m items ended up on landfill sites as people readied their wardrobes for summer. Surely we can do better than this?” The Guardian
Denim bio-textile
Waste Colour | Denim fibres
Sarmite truly believes that colour can have several lives, and we LOVE this concept. The ‘marble effect’ blue material they produced is formed from both matter and pigment from post-consumer denim. Recycled textile fibres (shoddy) are the main ingredient for this material, these amalgamated fibres have a rather unappealing greyish colour, so the studio has used natural dyes and other non-hazardous pigments to improve the colour. The lightweight surface can have marble-like patterns and looks wonderful when overdyed with indigo or madder.
Pre-Loved denim matter
“Didn’t we learn in school, that, if you mix all the colours together, the end result is going to be grey? That’s science. So we experimented by separating out colours and manually creating selected colour combinations, even using natural dyes, which results in a visually beautiful material.” Sarmite Polakova
Future Colour | Find out More
Website | www.studiosarmite.com
Instagram | @studio_sarmite
