Oxman is using engineered bacteria to grow color directly on knitted silk, turning the textile itself into the site of pigment production.
The New York design and research company’s Vigils project demonstrates the process through four capes, titled Velum I through IV. A bacterial culture sprayed onto the fabric produces indigo and melanin pigments over roughly 24 hours, following patterns directed by the textile’s construction and chemical signals.
The work demonstrates microbial coloration on garments at prototype scale, with one cape produced per batch. The company has checked how the color holds up after a household wash-and-dry cycle, but industry-standard durability tests remain ahead. It is seeking partners to develop commercial uses for the process.
“Color is not applied. It is expressed,” Neri Oxman said in a statement.
The process begins before the bacteria reach the cloth. Computer-controlled knitting lets the team program individual stitches and place fibers coated with chemical inducers at selected points in a three-dimensional silk structure.
Those coated fibers help determine where pigment forms. When the sprayed bacteria encounter an inducer, a genetic pathway switches on, prompting the cells to produce enzymes that assemble pigment from building blocks such as amino acids.
Oxman identified the organism as a modified strain of Escherichia coli BL21 and the inducers as anhydrotetracycline, or aTc, and C14-HSL. The textile serves as a growth substrate, which the company describes as a bioreactor.
The growth medium contains xanthan gum to thicken the liquid and limit its movement across the suspended textile. It also contains extra tyrosine and tryptophan, amino acid precursors for melanin and indigo, respectively.
After the coloration stage, the garments are washed and dried, leaving the pigment and pattern behind, according to Oxman. The company says the chemical inducers wash out during the first wash.
The team guides the pattern through the knit structure, placing treated fibers and changing the bacteria’s DNA. Growth conditions also affect how the color develops.
“Design is not design without the ability to tinker with the process itself. To wire genes to fibers, and knitting looms to petri dishes,” Oxman said.
Silk was selected for its ability to bind chemically to pigment, as well as its appearance, according to the company. Oxman says it has also tested the underlying inducible-fiber technique on wool, cotton, nylon and other commercially available materials. Further screening is needed to assess pigment intensity by fiber type and the durability of finished fabrics and garments.
“The performance and durability of the resulting textile are still being documented and validated,” the company said.
Preliminary evaluations have included one wash-and-dry cycle using household laundry equipment and handling of the articles, with no pigment migration or loss observed, according to Oxman. The company identified wash, rub and lightfastness testing under ASTM standards as next steps toward product development but did not provide specific test designations or performance grades.
One prototype, Velum I, used approximately 9 liters of growth medium over roughly 24 hours. That figure does not account for total process water use, including subsequent laundering. Oxman did not provide a cost comparison with conventional coloration.
The company says its indigo process uses soluble precursors that oxidize into insoluble pigment within the textile, avoiding the chemical reduction step used in conventional indigo dyeing. It has not measured the process’s overall water, energy or chemical requirements or established comparative environmental savings.
“Oxman has not conducted a project-specific life cycle assessment (LCA) for Vigils, and no individual measurements have been taken to date,” the company said.
The company calls the broader platform Hybrid Living Textiles, linking it to research that began with Vespers, a series of 3D-printed masks developed with the Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab between 2016 and 2019.
The final installment, Vespers III, incorporated engineered pigment-producing microorganisms within UV-cured resin. Vigils carries that approach into a soft textile that can drape around the body.
Another preceding project, O°, explored footwear and textiles made from polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA, a thermoplastic produced by bacteria. That work involved fiber production, knitting and 3D printing alongside research into biological pigmentation.
“The current work demonstrates the technical approach rather than a fully optimized industrial process,” the company said.
