National Winner Announced for Inaugural NEXTILE: Soy in Textiles Design Challenge.
| Published date | 26 March 2024 |
M2 PRESSWIRE-March 26, 2024-: National Winner Announced for Inaugural NEXTILE: Soy in Textiles Design Challenge
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* Students Across the Country Competed to Create the Next Great Innovation in Soy-Based Textiles; Winner Chosen for a Moth Designed Textile
ST. LOUIS, Mo. /3BL/ - Today U.S. Soy announced the national innovative winner of the NEXTILE: The Soy in Textiles Design Challenge. In its inaugural year, the NEXTILE Design Challenge invited design students across the country to leverage their creative and problem-solving skills to produce the next sustainable innovation in textile design. The catch? Students must create their products using one versatile ingredient - soybeans. Each participating individual or team received a design kit including seven sustainable, soy-based materials: soy thread, soy leather, soy French Terry, organic pigment and other soy products. Project submissions leveraged one or more of these ingredients to produce new textile threads, dyes, paints, designs and more.
U.S. Soy has long been a key ingredient for product innovation, going all the way back to Henry Ford who used soy-based paints, textile materials and plastics for automobile design. And today, U.S. Soy is used in more than 1,000 products on the market - from tires and shoes to fabrics and artificial grass. As a renewable crop grown on U.S. farms, and replenishing the soil annually with each growing season, soy is an important frontier for biobased products.
We are proud to announce the national winner is Kasandra Wright from University of Arkansas, for her stunning moth design textile sample, symbolizing transformation, survival and new beginnings.
"Throughout this experience, I learned about the importance of what soy-based products can provide in the apparel and textile industry," Wright said. "Soy fiber has an excellent drape and is a beautiful alternative to protein fibers as a sustainable material for apparel."
As the winner, Wright will receive a $1,000 scholarship.
"I was very impressed with the whole thought process of Kasandra's end product using the soy-based material that was provided," said Kathryn Phillips, chief curator at Springs Creative Product Group who served as a judge of the competition. "I truly believe this soy-based textile design has a broader commercial appeal in apparel as well as home products."
The judging panel was so impressed with the competitors, they elected to award a $500 scholarship to...
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