Former fashion designer Jess Redgrave began to feel a growing disillusionment with the clothing industry due to the damaging practices she witnessed. This led her to quit and sign up to study alternatives to the unsustainable realities of modern clothing production. Having found several exciting avenues into the potential of sunflowers, Jess is working on ideas that could shape the future of what we wear and what we sew with. In this conversation, she lays it all out for us, including answering a question you never knew to ask: how do you get your hands on enzymes?!

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Find out about Jess Redgrave and her Climafibre work on her website. 

I first found out about Jess and her explorations at this year’s Future Fabrics Expo in London. 

Listen to my experience of the expo in Episode #50: The Future of Fabrics. 

Jess’s investigations into sunflowers formed part of her work for her MA in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins, where you can also find more information on the investigations undertaken by her classmates. 

To test the product she’d been working on, Jess made a summer rain mac from fabric coated in a sunflower oil by-product. See image below: