These 'living' clothes fight air pollution

This designer's answer to fast fashion? Clothes that fight air pollution. Meet Roya Aghighi, who wants us to rethink our wardrobe...

Transcript

00:00They simply close your eyes right now and think of what you're wearing is a lie.

00:13Immediately would change the way how you're reacting to your clothes, right?

00:19Clothing used to be precious. It used to have a lot of sentimental value into it,

00:24but they're all gone right now, right? It's considered as something disposable these days.

00:29So we just constantly buy, consume, dispose.

00:47Coming from Tehran, which the air pollution gets to its hazardous levels most times,

00:55that you can actually taste the air in your throat. I wanted to do something about all of

01:00that. So I started to think about what if clothes were alive and what if they could photosynthesize?

01:07These clothes are going to start with no color. And as time goes by, they start growing these

01:14beautiful green patches and sort of a full growth cycle where the whole garment is green.

01:21And after this life cycle or by the end of it, they start losing the colors.

01:26So that's how you know what to do, when to do it. It's basically algae,

01:32which is an abundant material in the nature. Spun with biodegradable fibers. So it's a textile,

01:40but the fibers or the threads are already infused with algae within it.

01:54Basically, the life cycle of this clothing absolutely depends on how it's taken care of.

02:00For something that we think is going to last a month, if you take better care of it,

02:04if you provide it with what exactly is necessary, it may last even longer, right?

02:09So that depends on the care that it's receiving. And that's the whole point for

02:14me in this project, exactly, because I want people to figure that out for themselves.

02:18I don't want this to be considered as a new innovative material that's going to solve the

02:23fashion problem. I want this to be a conversation starter, a habit changer, a tool for all those

02:31alternative worlds that can happen, right?

02:50As a part of my goal, it was not necessarily to mass manufacture this type of material

02:58to the world, right? I wanted it to be a piece, a project that can work as a pathway for other

03:05designers to shape new realities and explore different ways or modes of being and thinking

03:12versus just another material to the world. There are many practices that are trying to actually

03:17do something, but that's like after the fact, upcycling, recycling, repurposing. They're great.

03:22Those are amazing practices that help raise the awareness to come from five years ago in

03:28terms of sustainability and encourage young generations to buy better materials that are

03:35good for the environment, eco-friendly, introduce all those meanings to the world, but they're not

03:40going to be effective alone. So I aim for this to push the fashion industry and textile industry

03:47to a different way and get them to think about other ways of manufacturing and producing

03:55that doesn't need to consume a lot of energy, labor, wasteful materials, and all of that.