After years of working overseas, industrial designer Violaine Buet returned to her hometown of Brittany, France, where she was determined to create something useful using local materials. Already textiles-obsessed, Buet fell in love with seaweed, of which there's no shortage along Brittany's coastline. She set a goal for herself, to explore "the aesthetic and technical palette of algae with the craftmanship of a designer."

Buet spent years experimenting with the material, collaborating with experts from various fields: Weaving, dyeing, leather crafting, jewelry making, tailoring, screenprinting, gliding, glazing and even biopolymer research. The result is a stunning portfolio of biodegradable textiles that she's successfully created from algae:

"Seaweed can be woven, dyed, sewn, printed, embossed, tufted, engraved, braided, pressed, etc.," Buet writes.

Buet has now set up a service whereby she can manufacture made-to-measure materials and volumes of her seaweed textiles, and she can also assemble materials R&D teams based on her experience conducting the multidisciplinary research listed above. You can learn more about Buet's work and services here.