Fermented fashion: growing textiles with plants and microbes

We are always drawn to practices that see beauty in process, where transformation is not hurried but allowed to unfold at nature's pace. The work of Chiel Lubbers represents a compelling intersection of biology, craft, and material innovation.

Cross-fiber, Fermented celery fibers - Westlandsmuseum, The Hague

It begins with celery stalks dissected by hand to separate their fibrous networks. The remaining stalks are juiced, ensuring nothing goes to waste, while the fibres are placed in preserving jars with water. What follows is a collaboration between human intention and microbial activity. Fermentation transforms the plant fibres over time, reducing and drying them into something unexpected, a clay-like material that is both strong and flexible, capable of being shaped and moulded like muscle tissue itself.

This is the foundation of An Inner-act, a graduation project exploring how plant anatomy mirrors human anatomy. When you dissect celery fibres, you encounter structures remarkably similar to our own connective tissue, the fascia and networks that hold our bodies in perpetual tension and release.

An Inner-act

The resulting bio-based textile becomes the medium for fashion pieces that make this connection tangible. These are not merely garments, but explorations of how we relate to living systems, how we receive and transmit information through our bodies, and how textiles can serve as an intermediary layer between our inner world and our environment.

Indusium, Fermented celery fibers - Westlandsmuseum, The Hague Fashionclash festival, Maastricht.

The work sits firmly within the emerging field of biocouture, where biology meets fashion design, offering genuine alternatives to conventional textile production. What makes this approach compelling is its honesty about collaboration. Chiel is not working alone but in concert with microorganisms, plant cycles, and natural processes of transformation.

Working with living materials requires a different sensibility. You cannot force fermentation. You cannot rush growth patterns. You must observe, adjust, and allow the material to reveal its own latent potential.

This concept of resonance, of being in continuous exchange with our environment, feels particularly pertinent now. We are all navigating the tension between human activity and natural systems, seeking ways to realign that relationship.

Projects such as An Inner-act show us what becomes possible when we slow down enough to notice the hidden networks connecting us to the living world. Working with plant material, with fermentation, with time itself as a design tool reminds us that we are part of something larger, networks of growth, decay, and renewal that we can choose to collaborate with rather than dominate.

Perhaps the true innovation lies not only in biodegradable materials, but in a biodegradable approach to making, one that returns us to a more responsive, embodied way of creating.

References: Chiel Lubbers