PARIS - At the Grand Palais, designer Eugène Riconneaus presented a couture dress woven from seaweed, a material innovation with profound implications for all fashion, including lingerie. His 'Ocean Apocalypse' gown, crafted from a scalable marine textile called Sei, signals a shift where designers actively engineer their fabrics, a practice deeply rooted in intimate apparel history.
Consider the parallels: in the 1930s, the introduction of Lastex yarn revolutionized foundations, offering unprecedented control and fit through its rubber core. Decades later, DuPont's Lycra, launched in 1959, transformed lingerie into a second skin. Riconneaus's Sei fiber - derived from algae and possessing antibacterial qualities - joins this lineage of purposeful material science. His approach, moving directly from lab to loom with mills in Lyon and Portugal, mirrors the close collaborations between brands like Warner's or Maidenform and textile chemists that once birthed new categories of undergarments.
Riconneaus argues designers must enter the laboratory to co-develop desirable materials, a sentiment that resonates with lingerie's technical artistry. The best corsetry and modern performance wear have always balanced aesthetics with engineering. As Sei is tested in blends with cotton and lyocell for applications from casualwear to complex weaves, its potential for intimate apparel is clear. The quest for sustainable, skin-friendly, and beautiful fabrics is not new; it is the very narrative of lingerie. Riconneaus's work simply writes the next chapter, proving that the future of fashion lies not just in design, but in the very threads from which it is spun.
Originally reported by WWD