In New York, two designers and a Fashion Institute of Technology professor have essentially grown a sneaker in a lab.
The shoes are made from a leather-like material composed of nanofibers of cellulose assembled by bacteria. Other sneaker features include a cork sole, natural dyes—including a black dye made from rusty nails and acacia tree back—and biodegradable glues and threads.
Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, designers at brand Public School, together with FIT’s Theanne Schiros, designed the shoes with an eye toward attracting younger consumers thinking more critically about their products. “For us, we wanted to really create a structure and framework to be able to bring the two together to solve existential threats—even in a small way,” Schiros tells WWD.com. “We have mechanical properties, chemical properties, biodegradability—this has all the properties to make an impact on an industry.”
The project is part of a nonprofit initiative dubbed One x One launched by nonprofit Slow Factor Foundation in September of last year and supported by Swarovski.