In 2025 he was appointed Forbes Under 30 and has already several important collections to his credit: she is Caroline Zimbalist And he creates his works only with what he normally finds in supermarkets. Spirulina or corn starch, jelly or agar or tapioca starch, just to name a few.
With these elements, he has developed a bioplasty, which uses to create clothes and accessories, jewelry and sculptures. His goal is and gradually replace the highly polluting fossil materials with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
At university, I was determined to create my fabrics – he tells in an interview. I was going through a difficult period with the toxic acrylic paint skin and I poisoned myself several times. One of my professors suggested to me to deepen the “bioplastics” and I started a new path. I wanted and experienced dozens of recipes until I found some that I could color and manipulate according to my preferences. They were also non -toxic and biodegradable.
Its ingredients are not fabrics or skin, therefore, but algae, corn starch, vegetable glycerin and agar-agar. Everything is mixed, heated, poured into the molds and dried as if it were a high pastry recipe. But what emerges are not sweets, but clothes, bags, sculptures and lamps that challenge the boundaries between fashion, art and sustainability.
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The artist who transforms painting and sustainability into fashion
Caroline Zimbalist started painting, illustrating and sculpting as a child. But his true adventure in the world of design exploded in high school, when, for rebellion to the fashions of the “popular”, he began to transform the clothes: he cut them, cooked them, reinvented them in his own way. From there the decision: study fashion. The route took her to the Parsons School of Design, where she obtained a degree in textile and fashion design, also coming to be nominated for the Future Textile Award.
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For Caroline, fashion has never been only aesthetic: it is an extension of painting. Not surprisingly, he literally started to disassemble abstract paintings to transform them into clothes, imagining bodies as canvases to drape with new chromatic palettes.
Today his works have gone around the world, exhibited in exhibitions between New York, Miami, San Francisco, Thailand and sold in prestigious spaces such as the Whitney Museum, SSENSE and 1st Dibs.
The commitment against ultra fast fashion
She herself describes herself as an artist who sees sustainability not a trend, but a commitment. His vision of fashion is clear: to experiment with new natural materials without losing the link with traditional artisan techniques. Everything starts from a question that we should all ask yourself: what happens to a garment after the catwalk and the purchase?
For her, the story of a dress does not end when she enters the shop, but continues until the moment she returns (or should return) to the earth.
There is no shortage of projects: Caroline is working with Exberry to create clothes made with natural food dyes, designed to be even edible at the end of the evening.
Caroline Zimbalist is not just a designer, but a visual narrator who reminds us that each dress has a story. And that that story must also speak of sustainability and respect.
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