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Industrial Designer Transforms Seaweed Into Extraordinary Textiles

After years of working overseas, industrial designer Violaine Buet returned to her hometown of Brittany, France, where she was determined to create something useful using local materials. Already textiles-obsessed, Buet fell in love with seaweed, of which there’s no shortage along Brittany’s coastline. She set a goal for herself, to explore “the aesthetic and technical palette of algae with the craftmanship of a designer.”

Buet spent years experimenting with the material, collaborating with experts from various fields: Weaving, dyeing, leather crafting, jewelry making, tailoring, screenprinting, gliding, glazing and even biopolymer research. The result is a stunning portfolio of biodegradable textiles that she’s successfully created from algae:

“Seaweed can be woven, dyed, sewn, printed, embossed, tufted, engraved, braided, pressed, etc.,” Buet writes.

Buet has now set up a service whereby she can manufacture made-to-measure materials and volumes of her seaweed textiles, and she can also assemble materials R&D teams based on her experience conducting the multidisciplinary research listed above. You can learn more about Buet’s work and services here.