streetwear made from preserved seaweed shows algae's future in fashion at reykjavik edition

fashion pieces stitched with icelandic seaweed

Inside The Reykjavik EDITION hotel in Iceland, fashion designers Tanguy Mélinand and Drífa Líftóra unveil their collection of clothes stitched from harvested and preserved Icelandic seaweed for SEAWEEDWORKS exhibition. Both designers collaborate with SEAWEEDWORKS, a project founded by creative director Charlie Strand in hopes of spotlighting the uses of seaweed from art and fashion to design and technology. The trio has realized the seaweed-sewn garments to life, finding a platform to showcase their upcycled fashion pieces to reach a broader audience.

This is where two rosters of design and creative mediums stepped in: The Reykjavik EDITION Hotel, the recent addition to boutique hospitality’s growing properties, and DesignMarch, a platform festival in Iceland that highlights new approaches to materials in the field of design. Through the Icelandic festival and the deluxe hotel’s space, Mélinand, Líftóra, and SEAWEEDWORKS exhibit the process and materiality of seaweed clothing.

photo and header images: jacket by Tanguy Mélinand, photos by Tanguy Cattin | images courtesy of SEAWEEDWORKS and The Reykjavik EDITION

Exhibiting the materiality of seaweed as garments

Before Tanguy Mélinand conceived his pieces, he waded through the shallow water in Iceland, his jeans rolled up around his knees, and languidly palmed the strings of seaweed his hand caught. He hung them in his workshop to dry, and as soon as the strands of seaweed were free from water and moisture, he tailored and repurposed them into a buttoned jacket, a high-waist skirt, a pair of plaid trousers, a handbag, and a pinstriped over jacket.

Mélinand says that his collection revolves around the memory of the fire he saw in his childhood home when he was younger. He vividly remembers the date: March 10, 2014, Monday. From this recollection, he names his series ‘03/10/2014’ as a way for him to, once again, rehash his treasured souvenir of the past. Like a fire that fizzled out and time that passed by, the changes in the states of matter form part of his overarching theme, more visible in the gradient, shifting hues of seaweed in his collection.

Designer Drífa Líftóra shared the space with Mélinand in showcasing the future of seaweed as a fashion ingredient with SEAWEEDWORKS. For her work, she hangs a one-off jacket piece inside The Reykjavik EDITION Hotel, in time for DesignMarch, embedding seaweed into the fabric and material of the clothing. The outfit appears to be streamlined with a puffer-jacket look, layered with rectangular cuts and detailed with stitches and threads. ‘When it comes to fashion design I like bending and breaking the rules of human anatomy by applying weird pattern making and complex prints in my designs,’ she says.

drying seaweed | photo by Tanguy Cattin

The Reykjavik edition is rooted in design and architecture

Part of The Reykjavik EDITION is rooted in design and architecture. Opening in 2019, the property was designed in partnership with local architecture firm T.ark and New York-based studio, Roman and Williams with the guidance of ISC design. Its ties with these industries unraveled in an extension of showcasing progressive design pieces, making its involvement in DesignMarch a natural next step.

From the outside, The Reykjavik EDITION stuns guests with its ebony façade of shou sugi ban timber, charred using an ancient Japanese technique, and blackened steel frames that allude to Iceland’s abundant lava landscape. As soon as guests step inside the hotel, arriving in Iceland in high spirits through the country’s flag carrier Icelandair, volcanic rock on the floor and the sculptural reception desk mimicking basalt stone greet them, embodying intricate patterns inspired by Icelandic geometry.

The design team installed an Icelandic lava stone sculptural totem in the lobby center to even out the warm landscape between the tactile terracotta saddle leather wrapped around concrete columns and white oak floors, ceiling beams, and slats that flank the lobby bar. Reaching the rooftop, the hotel’s ‘The Roof’ offers a panoramic mountain, North Atlantic Ocean, and old town views on the 7th floor. Here, the space can be divided by a glass door for private events and doubles as a place to enjoy the endless bright summer evenings and the mythical northern lights in the colder months.

photo by Tanguy Cattin

Warm retreats cocooned in suites

Below the floors of the rooftop, the hotel’s 253 guestrooms and suites cocoon warm retreats, each with their beds facing floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the lush landscapes of the surrounding neighborhood. After a deserved break in the room, The Reykjavik EDITION opens up modern meeting and event spaces on the ground floor, including flexible studios, a boardroom with natural light, bleach oat-wide plank floorings, and a grand ballroom with pre-function space.

It is here that Mélinand, Líftóra, and SEAWEEDWORKS featured their fashion pieces all while Mélinand and Líftóra showed a live work-in-progress overview for the public to see, a visual invitation to the circularity of the numerous wonders of nature when sourced and approached right. Mélinand was a graduate of fashion design at Geneve University of Art and Design and a 2022 winner of the Yinger Gold Prize for sustainable design, and Líftóra, who is a fashion design graduate in Haute Couture and Technology in Paris College of Art, combines screen painting with her fashion approach and textile pieces.