Kitchen ingredients, seaweed and tapioca starch, that she turns into sculptural dresses.
Caroline Zimbalist does not design like most fashion people. A New York artist and designer with a BFA from Parsons and time at Central Saint Martins, she works at the place where fashion, sculpture, and sustainability meet, treating a dress as closer to a future relic than an outfit.
Her method is almost homemade. Zimbalist cooks her own bioplastics on her stovetop, mixing natural ingredients like seaweed and tapioca starch into a rubbery material she pours and shapes directly over molds and fabric. The results are sculptural garments, jewelry, and objects that blur the line between wearable art and something grown rather than sewn.
The industry noticed the approach. Zimbalist earned a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and has collaborated with designers like Elena Velez on bio-material pieces, turning a stovetop experiment into a real voice in sustainable fashion.
"She cooks her dresses from seaweed and starch, and the fashion world is paying attention."
Most sustainability in fashion is a marketing claim bolted onto the same old supply chain. Zimbalist started from the material itself, inventing it by hand, so the sustainability is not a label but the actual substance of the work. She rebuilt the thing from the molecule up.
This is the young creative ANF loves to spotlight. Do not accept the materials you were handed. Zimbalist cooked up her own and built a practice on them.
She started in the kitchen. She ended up redefining what a dress can be made of.
