The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) hosted its 20th annual sustainability conference this week, commemorating two decades of progress under the theme “Industry Disruptors.”
The two-day summit, held at FIT’s Katie Murphy Amphitheater April 8-9, centered on innovation, business, communication related to climate action, including next-gen textiles.
The event highlighted the widening gap between the early promise of fashion’s materials science and engineering (MSE) scene and its current status. Biofabrication, once hyped with big promises and ambitious timelines, now faces a reality check.
The shift shows an industry contending with the true capabilities of biofabricated materials versus lofty expectations.
Few people have tracked that arc as closely as Suzanne Lee. A designer-turned-biomaterials pioneer, Lee has spent more than 20 years working at the intersection of biology, design and manufacturing— long enough to watch the field cycle through optimism, overreach and, now, recalibration.
Her early work bordered on science fiction. In the early 2000s, Lee began experimenting with garments grown from microbes, producing sheet-like materials from yeast and bacteria in nutrient-rich solutions. The process was less like traditional manufacturing and more like brewing fabric, she said.
Those early pieces were deliberately stripped back. Simple silhouettes, no seasonal ambition. The point was to focus on the material itself—how it formed, how it performed, what it could mean for a different kind of fashion supply chain.
What she uncovered was just how complicated this new approach could be. Scaling those materials proved difficult; costs remained high. While the visual language of biofabrication captured the industry’s imagination, its underlying technologies struggled to meet the practical demands of fashion production.
That tension has, at times, defined the sector since. Early efforts to grow leather in labs—whether through tissue engineering or collagen production—yielded more in samples than in scalable solutions. Even well-capitalized startups were pushed to pivot, typically toward sectors (such as beauty or food) with higher margins and less exacting performance requirements.
“It turns out that fashion is really hard,” Lee said.
That may be because fashion, by contrast, is unforgiving. Materials must perform across durability, feel, finish and manufacturability, all while hitting price points that leave little room for experimentation. The juggling act has generated an industry that appears equally eager to endorse next-gen alternatives as it is structurally resistant to producing them, though this phase seems to be winding down.
“There’s huge fatigue with endless prototypes,” Lee said, describing a change in how brands are approaching innovation. “We’re not launching it unless we can go straight into proper production.”
It’s a subtler, more sensible strategy. Progress is still happening, but innovation is moving behind the scenes. Fermentation—a technology that already works in other industries—is now leading the way.
“We’ve been brewing beer and wine for millennia,” Lee said, pointing to fermentation as a more scalable pathway. Industry innovators are applying the chemical breakdown process to fibers, dyes and coatings, often as components and not replacements.
The shift may lack the spectacle of lab-grown leather jackets, but it reflects a deeper understanding of how change actually happens: Incrementally. And within the constraints of existing systems. Another key lesson? Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
For years, materials science and fashion moved on separate tracks. Now, partnerships between higher education institutions (such as FIT and Columbia University) are beginning to bridge that gap. Designers are collaborating with scientists earlier and brands are signing on sooner. New models (co-development deals, long-term sourcing commitments) are emerging as well.
“You want the product, but you have to partner with us,” Lee said. “We need guaranteed volumes; otherwise our investors are not going to put money back into this.”
The framing of biomaterials themselves is evolving as well. While much of the early work focused on replication—particularly on recreating leather without animals—that premise is increasingly being reconsidered.
“We already have leather. It can’t be improved upon,” Lee said. “What can we do that existing materials can’t?”