Kering is putting bio-based textiles, recycled alternatives and experimental fabrication techniques into the hands of emerging designers as sustainability moves from fashion’s laboratory to the runway

Luxury fashion has spent years promising that the clothes of the future will be made differently. Now one of the industry’s largest groups is attempting to demonstrate what that future might actually look like.

Kering, the French luxury conglomerate behind Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, is working with 10 emerging designers on an experimental project intended to transform next-generation sustainable materials into complete fashion looks.

The initiative, known as the “Wardrobe Edition,” is being developed through Kering’s Material Innovation Lab and the sustainable-fashion platform S|STYLE. The resulting garments are expected to be presented around Milan Fashion Week, offering designers an opportunity to work with materials that remain unusual even within the high-end fashion industry.

Among them are bio-based alternatives to conventional leather, recycled materials, plant-derived pigments, novel protein-based fibres and even compostable materials suitable for 3D printing.

The project is significant because one of sustainable fashion’s greatest difficulties has never been simply inventing new materials.

It has been convincing designers to use them.

Luxury clothing is unusually demanding. Materials must not merely appear environmentally promising on paper; they must drape correctly, withstand cutting and stitching, accept colour reliably, feel desirable against the skin and perform consistently enough to be produced commercially.

For creative directors working under intense seasonal deadlines, experimental textiles can introduce risks that familiar leather, wool, silk and cotton do not.

Kering’s latest initiative is designed to narrow that gap between laboratory innovation and the design studio.

The company’s Material Innovation Lab, established in Italy in 2013, operates as both a research centre and a specialised material library. It sources and evaluates alternative materials before making them available to designers and sourcing teams throughout the group.

Over more than a decade, the laboratory has built a collection spanning thousands of materials and suppliers, concentrating particularly on categories such as cotton, silk, cashmere, viscose and polyester.

But increasingly, the most interesting work is taking place beyond conventional fibres.

One material being explored by the designers is Ephea, a leather-like material derived from fungal mycelium. Another is Spiber, which uses microbial fermentation to produce engineered protein materials that can be processed into fibres and textiles.

Elsewhere, designers are experimenting with recycled leather substitutes, plant-based colour systems, nanocellulose and advanced printable compounds.

These technologies belong to a wider transformation taking place inside fashion.

For generations, the prestige of luxury clothing was closely tied to traditional materials: calfskin handbags, silk dresses, cashmere coats and carefully selected exotic fibres.

Luxury companies are now confronting a more complicated equation.

They need to preserve the tactile quality and emotional appeal associated with those materials while reducing environmental pressure from livestock, water consumption, chemical processing, waste and fossil-fuel-based synthetics.

Kering has increasingly framed material innovation as central to that challenge.

Earlier this year, the group identified material innovation as one of three priorities in the next phase of its sustainability strategy, alongside resource efficiency and investment in craftsmanship and supply chains.

Balenciaga has already provided a glimpse of how far that experimentation could go.

For its Spring 2026 collection, the house introduced a silk-like textile created by German biotechnology company AMSilk. The material is produced using engineered microorganisms inspired by the properties of spider silk rather than conventional silkworm cultivation.

According to Kering, producing the material uses approximately 97% less water and generates 81% less carbon dioxide than conventional silk manufacturing.

Balenciaga also experimented with 3D weaving, a software-assisted technique capable of constructing garments and textile forms with less cutting waste.

Those developments illustrate an important shift in the language of sustainable fashion.

A decade ago, environmental initiatives frequently revolved around familiar ideas such as organic cotton, recycled polyester or reductions in packaging.

The conversation is becoming considerably more technologically sophisticated.

Biotechnology companies are engineering proteins through fermentation. Material scientists are growing structures from fungi. Textile manufacturers are developing fibres from agricultural by-products. Digital fabrication systems are attempting to construct garments with dramatically less waste.

The result is a fashion industry gradually beginning to resemble a meeting point between an atelier and a laboratory.

Yet translating those innovations into commercially successful clothes remains difficult.

A material may possess impressive environmental credentials but fail because it cannot tolerate the heat required during manufacturing. Another may look convincing but lack sufficient durability. A new fibre may perform beautifully but remain too expensive to manufacture at scale.

Designers participating in the Kering project have encountered precisely these kinds of obstacles, including unfamiliar material behaviour and difficulties adapting production techniques to new substances.

That is partly why emerging designers have become valuable testing partners.

Smaller labels may possess fewer financial resources than multinational luxury houses, but they can often experiment more freely. They are less constrained by enormous commercial volumes and entrenched production systems and can integrate unconventional materials into the creative process from the beginning.

Kering is effectively using the Wardrobe Edition as a bridge between those two worlds: supplying younger designers with technical resources while using their experimentation to investigate how new materials behave as actual clothing.

The approach also reflects growing pressure on luxury companies to prove that sustainability commitments can survive difficult economic conditions.

The global fashion industry entered 2026 facing weak consumer confidence in several important markets, geopolitical uncertainty and persistent cost pressures. Fashion executives surveyed for the annual Business of Fashion and McKinsey industry report identified tariffs as their leading challenge and described the operating environment as increasingly difficult.

When sales slow, environmental initiatives can become vulnerable to cost-cutting.

Material innovation therefore needs to demonstrate not only ecological value but commercial potential.

For luxury groups, that means developing alternatives capable of eventually reaching sufficient scale, reliability and quality to compete with traditional materials.

Leather is particularly important.

Animal leather remains fundamental to the economics of European luxury because handbags, shoes and accessories often generate some of the sector’s highest margins.

Replacing even a portion of that material without compromising perceived quality has consequently become one of fashion technology’s most important ambitions.

Kering reportedly aims to reduce its use of virgin animal leather by 30% by 2028, making viable alternatives increasingly strategically important.

But the challenge is also cultural.

Consumers do not buy luxury purely because a material performs well. They buy craftsmanship, history, scarcity, symbolism and sensory experience.

A laboratory-developed textile therefore faces an unusual test: it must convince customers not only that it is responsible, but that it is beautiful.

That may ultimately explain why designers are so important to the process.

Technology can create a fibre.

Fashion has to create desire.

If a mushroom-derived material or fermented protein textile is presented primarily as an ecological substitute, consumers may interpret it as a compromise. If the same material enables a designer to produce a silhouette, texture or surface impossible with traditional leather or silk, sustainability becomes part of innovation rather than sacrifice.

Kering has already begun pushing that argument across its brands.

Its Material Innovation Lab is designed not simply to identify materials with lower environmental impacts but to give creative teams access to new technical possibilities. The group describes material diversification and the development of a new generation of luxury materials as fundamental to its long-term strategy.

The consequences could eventually extend well beyond luxury.

High-end fashion operates at relatively small production volumes compared with mass-market apparel, allowing expensive technologies to be introduced before economies of scale make them affordable elsewhere.

Innovations once confined to luxury automobiles, electronics or professional sport have frequently migrated into mainstream products after costs declined.

Fashion materials could follow a similar path.

A bioengineered textile initially appearing in a €3,000 jacket may eventually become viable for considerably more accessible clothing if manufacturing expands.

That possibility explains why experimental projects around Milan Fashion Week matter beyond the individual garments being displayed.

They provide laboratories with visibility, give startups opportunities to demonstrate their technologies and allow manufacturers to observe how designers manipulate unfamiliar substances.

They also expose the weaknesses.

Some technologies will never reach commercial scale. Others may prove environmentally beneficial in one measurement while creating unexpected problems elsewhere. Claims surrounding recyclability, biodegradability and carbon reductions will increasingly require rigorous lifecycle analysis rather than marketing language.

Fashion’s material revolution will therefore not happen through one miraculous replacement for leather or polyester.

It is more likely to emerge gradually through dozens of technologies, each addressing a different part of the industry’s environmental footprint.

That makes Kering’s experiment particularly revealing.

The clothes themselves will inevitably attract attention when they reach Milan. But the more consequential story is happening behind the garments — among microbiologists, textile engineers, material startups, craftspeople and designers attempting to decide what luxury should physically be made from in the decades ahead.

For much of fashion history, innovation meant changing the silhouette.

The next great transformation may begin much earlier in the process.

It may begin with the material itself.