Studio Stories

Exploring Innovation: Stanford's FashionX Students Visit Moon for a Deep Dive Into Sustainable Fashion

02/10/2025

IMG_3695 (1).jpeg

Moon Creative Lab recently presented to Stanford University’s FashionX group, a student-led, pre-professional group focused on innovation in fashion design. The discussion dove into the intersection of sustainability and technology in fashion, with a spotlight on 3D printing. The fashion industry, long marred by significant material waste, sees much of its surplus end up in landfills, a problem ripe for innovation.

Lovette Appleton, Sr. Product Developer at Moon Creative Lab, explored the pressing need for sustainable material alternatives in fashion, highlighting how this mission aligns with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12, which advocates for sustainable consumption and production patterns. The emphasis of the discussion was on how 3D printing could radically transform the future of fashion by disrupting traditional manufacturing and the fashion supply chain. 

variloom 2 use.png

Traditional fashion manufacturing often yields excessive material waste with designers forced to cut from bulk materials, leaving scraps and unused remnants. By contrast, 3D printing offers a precision-focused solution, enabling designers to build garments and accessories layer by layer, using only the materials required. Materials used in 3D printing allow for reusing and recycling, embedding sustainability not only into the reduction of waste during the production process but also into the end-of-life of the product as well.  

Moon Creative Lab’s sustainable 3D printed fashion venture, Variloom, is tackling this problem and transforming the fashion industry by inventing new 3D-printable materials that create soft wearable fabrics that are fully recyclable. 

unnamed.png

We were thrilled to engage with students, answering their questions on scalability, material innovation, and the design possibilities of 3D-printed fashion. The collaboration highlighted the shared vision between academia and industry to pioneer advancements in sustainable practices. Stanford's FashionX students – future leaders in design and innovation – bring fresh perspectives to solving complex challenges like waste reduction in fashion. These discussions open up exciting pathways to reimagine how fashion can evolve in a resource-conscious world, aligning with Moon Creative Lab's mission to drive purposeful innovation that contributes to a more sustainable planet.

 

Learn more about Variloom at variloom.com.

Share on

Related stories

Learn from the story of the Eureca team, who set out to create a business to foster space-related talent.

Read More

Some wonder: is there still room for designers to shine?

Read More

Join the Moon Community!

Get early access to news, workshops, and events across our Palo Alto and Tokyo studios.