If TômTex has its way, clothes, bags or sneakers made of crab shells could soon be on the shelves. The scientists at the New York-based company are one step further in the development of the new type of fabric and now know how to manufacture and process the leather-like material very precisely. It was even seen on the catwalk. Engineer Nicole Sved shares her vision of the future from the TômTex lab in Brooklyn with FashionUnited.
Engineer with passion
The innovative textile from TômTex is not made from crab meat, but from the complex type of sugar chitin, which is contained in their shells. “You can find it everywhere in nature,” assures Sved. She describes the material as a white, sandy, odorless powder. “We get it mostly from crab shells because that’s a big part of the waste from the shellfish industry, but it’s in all sorts of things, including mushrooms, coffee and insects.”
The researcher describes what happens after cleaning the shells as a water-based process. After the chitin is chemically extracted, water and chemicals are used to convert it into a viscous substance that looks like amber honey. This then adds various additives to TômTex. The company does not reveal exactly what these are, but they are said to be necessary to give the material the desired color and texture. The liquid agent is poured into a mold and dried. If necessary, a texture can then be created with heat and pressure.
“You can edit the material in different ways. For example, you can make it look like snakeskin or alligator leather, or wear it down with other textures. You can see that in the catwalk photos. We’ve worked with brands Peter Do and Di Petsa and these different looks show that there’s a lot of variation. That’s how it looks [die Textur der Kreationen von] Di Petsa looks like fish scales and is quite see-through, while Peter Do’s material looks like latex and is stretchy.” There are no commercial partnerships yet, “but that could change in the next nine months,” reveals Sved. “The company is developing very quickly, but at the moment we are still in the research and development phase and are working on a number of formulas.”
Scalable and feasible
In the early stages of TômTex, company founder Uyen Tran also experimented with another material, namely coffee. Millions of tons of coffee grounds are generated every year, a waste stream that should be taken just as seriously as shrimp shells. However, a key difference to crab shells is the more complicated supply chain. “We were looking for something that is always available and that you can really do something with,” says the founder. Because a sophisticated infrastructure is required to recover the coffee waste from cafes, companies and consumers. Shrimp producers often remove the chitin from the shells themselves to sell it as ready-to-eat raw material. This is where TômTex comes in.
No poison, no plastic, no oil
The crab system is getting better and better, especially in terms of sustainability. Criticism of leather imitations such as apple and grape leather often refers to the plastic that has to be added to these “sustainable” alternatives. According to TômTex, leather-like crab fabric does not belong on this list. The principles are: no petroleum, no plastics, no toxins. The exact chemicals used in crab leather are kept secret, but they are not dangerous. “You could touch anything without gloves and it would be perfectly fine. In principle, the substance is even edible, although we do not recommend it,” says Sved.
The dyes that TômTex adds to the substance are natural. They are obtained, for example, from colored clay. “Lighter colors are more difficult, but there are many colorful minerals that we can use. However, some natural dyes are even worse for the environment than synthetic dyes. So it remains a balancing act. We are in the process of finding out which colors remain the most beautiful in the long term.”
In many ways, the process is similar to growing kombucha leather, another sustainable type of textile being experimented with in the biomaterials industry. Again, this is a water-based material with the same sustainability challenge: the drying process. “The [Trocknen] can take a long time. Many solvents used in the lab help dry the material faster but are not very environmentally friendly. Energy-intensive heating devices are also often required. If we want to scale up, we need to optimize the drying process.”
Crab suede
The technology does not require investment in new production processes and simply works with existing machines, making production easily scalable. The focus is on improving the material and measuring the positive impact. For example, the shrimp fabric appears to be fully biodegradable and doesn’t appear to require any industrial processes. Normally this is only possible under strict conditions, like a certain pH value or a certain temperature, but you can just throw this material in the trash, according to Sved. “We can’t yet say exactly how long it will take for it to fully decompose,” she admits. “We are currently carrying out a life cycle assessment for this purpose.”
At the moment, the TômTex laboratory is full of ocher pigments of all shapes and sizes. Experimentation is being carried out with textures that could be used for large garments and fashion accessories: both new textile looks and imitation leathers with and without pronounced textures. TômTex is now looking for a suitable facility in Vietnam. With any luck, commercial production of crab shell fabric may begin commercially by early 2025 — and suede, Sved hints. “We have been using these techniques for some time. We then add additional cellulose fibers adhered to a foil to create the typical soft feel of suede. is cellulose [nach Chitin] the third most commonly used biopolymer and we will soon be using both.”
This article was published on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ