EXPERIMENTAL FASHION LAB \ Upcycling with Bio-Materials

🧬 Experimental Fashion Lab: Upcycling with Bio-Materials

A hands-on workshop developed by What A Waste in collaboration with BioLab Lisboa, exploring bio-materials not merely as alternatives to conventional textiles — but as active agents capable of reshaping how fabric is understood, constructed, and reimagined.

🌿 About the Lab

Participants will engage directly with organic and bio-fabricated matter, investigating its behavior, limitations, and creative potential when applied to existing garments and discarded fabrics. This is a material-led inquiry into the shifting relationship between fashion, waste, and bio-based innovation.

🔬 What to Expect

Rather than chasing a finished product, the session centers entirely on process — testing, manipulating, and observing how materials interact in real time. Upcycling here is not about repair; it's about reconfiguration. Waste becomes a site of experimentation, and new aesthetic languages emerge through instability, decay, and growth.

The lab operates as a temporary studio-research space, where outcomes remain deliberately open and authorship is shared between maker and material.

♻️ Part of a Broader Vision

This workshop is part of the What A Waste internship program, nurturing critical, material-driven approaches to sustainable fashion practice.

A BioLab Lisboa × What A Waste collaboration 🤝