Huddersfield student to lead a sustainable fashion innovation with seaweed leather

A fashion student from Huddersfield is experimenting with seaweed to lead a more sustainable fashion in her upcoming years in textile and fashion brand marketing. Anna Watkins has been rewarded a £5,000 grant as a Young Innovator Award from Knowledge Transfer Network. Anna before lockdown has shown meticulous efforts to design everyday objects from seaweed leather. Uncommon Alchemy, her business produces stuff like notebooks, wallet cases, lampshades and other stuff made from this leather. She is looking forward to expanding her business. Anna has won a £5,000 award, by Young Innovators Awards, to help grow her enterprise. Through Huddersfield’s EPY Programme only she got the opportunity to research and explore business ideas that she can for.

As concerned about sustainability in the fashion industry she researched and experimented with seaweed and other organic materials for producing malleable plastic for different objects. She got the major information online and experimented with 100 samples, and over time learned a lot and discovered her interest in biomaterials. Seaweed upon drying and heating is used in the food industry as a gelling agent that can be used in molds. She also tried the mushroom mycelium but learned that seaweed was easier to deal with.

Now she is looking for other material innovation and compostable polymers that can be scaled widely by her for the enterprise.