Substanz in Shanghai: AlgaeSkin at Shanghai Design Week 2025

AlgaeSkin prototypes at Shanghai Design Week

Substanz has a long-standing and productive relationship with PEELSPHERE®, a material R&D company developing innovative bio-based materials for new applications.

AlgaeSkin was one of the first next-generation materials onboarded by Substanz in 2023. Since then, we have developed a number of exhibition pieces for PEELSPHERE®, exploring how the material can be translated from an innovative biomaterial into distinctive, functional products.

In 2025, two Substanz designs were featured at the PEELSPHERE® stand during Shanghai Design Week, bringing AlgaeSkin to an international design audience in China.

The featured pieces — Martian 1.0 and Babygirl — were both produced using AlgaeSkin, demonstrating the material's potential for contemporary fashion accessories and experimental product design.

Designing with AlgaeSkin

Working with emerging materials means understanding how their specific physical properties can influence design.

At Substanz, we use garment prototyping to explore characteristics such as texture, flexibility, structure, thickness and finishing, and to determine how these properties can be translated into a finished product.

The Shanghai Design Week prototypes allowed AlgaeSkin to be experienced not simply as a material sample, but as a finished design object. This is an important step in demonstrating the potential of biomaterials for fashion and accessories and helping designers understand how new materials can be incorporated into their own product development processes.

AlgaeSkin: an algae-based biomaterial

Developed by PEELSPHERE®, AlgaeSkin is a biodegradable, petroleum-plastic-free bio-polymer derived from algae.

PEELSPHERE® brings together designers, engineers and entrepreneurs to develop new material solutions and explore their applications. Supported by Kering Group, the company has positioned AlgaeSkin within the emerging field of bio-based materials and alternatives to conventional synthetic materials.

Its distinctive natural texture and material efficiency offer designers another option when developing products beyond traditional leather and petroleum-based synthetics.

For fashion accessories, the material's physical and visual characteristics can become part of the design itself — rather than simply replicating the appearance of an existing material.

From biomaterial to fashion product

Substanz works at the intersection of material innovation, fashion design and manufacturing, helping brands, designers and material companies understand how emerging materials can be applied in real products.

Our collaboration with PEELSPHERE® demonstrates this approach: selecting an innovative material, developing design concepts and creating physical prototypes that communicate its potential.

The presentation of Martian 1.0 and Babygirl at Shanghai Design Week 2025 showed how AlgaeSkin can move from material innovation into contemporary accessory design — making new biomaterials more tangible, understandable and accessible to the fashion industry.