Fashion-Oriented Bio Textiles. The New Speculative Aesthetics of Biocouture

The paper investigates some recent manufacturing processes of biohacking and synthetic biology applied to the fashion textile sector, comparing their laboratory practices, intentions and appearances. By linking heterogeneous knowledge in a transdisciplinary vision, the paper analyses their potential, combining case studies, processes, and arising aesthetics. In this scenario, the laboratory practices are configured as open study processes, oriented toward a new way of conceiving fashion manufacture, perfectly integrated with the planet’s ecosystems. Among the most interesting aspects, new forms of awareness, intimately linked to the nature to which humankind belongs, emerge, pushing the designer to the role of a catalyst of a sustainable and multispecies vision. Through an analysis of case studies, the contribution finally reflects the rise of an aesthetic-sensorial paradigm: the formless. All biomaterials and dyes deriving from living organisms seem to relate to this aesthetic category since they lead to a different conception of shape, color, and substance. In contrast to a classical aesthetic perfection, biomaterials and bio textiles often reveal textures that are dotted, shaded, imperfect, antihierarchic, opaque, unpredictable, and for this reason, they shake the viewer, destabilizing him. The contribution aims to promote an investigation into fashion-oriented bio practices connecting transdisciplinary knowledges to fascinating aesthetics for the consolidation of new fashion imagery.