By Máté Bikkes | June 5, 2024
OPZuid Funding for TRESS
Human Material Loop has joined forces with Sustanix Materialtech and fashion designer Tess van Zalinge for TRESS, Textile Revolution Empowering Sustainable Style, an OPZuid-supported project focused on bringing textiles made from human hair waste closer to commercial application.
Human Material Loop has developed a textile material from discarded human hair that can be processed using existing textile manufacturing equipment. This compatibility with established infrastructure is an important part of its potential to scale.
TRESS takes the technology beyond material development and into application.
The project will produce Human Material Loop textiles at pilot scale and validate them within the high-end fashion industry. Sustanix will contribute a biobased coating designed to improve the material's performance, while Tess van Zalinge will translate the material into a collection that demonstrates its possibilities to both the fashion industry and the public.
For Human Material Loop, the project provides an opportunity to understand how the material behaves beyond the laboratory. Producing larger textile surfaces and working directly with designers and manufacturers provides information about processing, performance, and the requirements that emerge when a new material enters existing production systems.
The aim is not simply to demonstrate that textiles can be made from human hair, but to test how they can function within established manufacturing and design processes.
The collaboration also brings together three different areas of expertise: material technology, biobased chemistry and fashion design. The aim is not simply to demonstrate that textiles can be made from human hair, but to test how they can function within established manufacturing and design processes.
TRESS started in April 2024 in Limburg and is supported through the OPZuid 2021 to 2027 programme, with European, national and regional public funding.
For Human Material Loop, TRESS represents another step from material research towards industrial application, using collaboration to test what happens when a new raw material leaves the laboratory and enters the hands of the people who will ultimately work with it.
Read more about the TRESS project at Stimulus.
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