{"id":8232,"date":"2026-01-15T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/interview-with-simon-angel-curator-of-sustainable-innovations\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T12:52:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T12:52:55","slug":"interview-with-simon-angel-curator-of-sustainable-innovations-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/interview-with-simon-angel-curator-of-sustainable-innovations-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Simon Angel, Curator of SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Guest article by Muchaneta ten Napel<\/h3>\n

Simon Angel has been curating the Sustainable Innovations Area at KEYHOUSE since 2018.<\/strong> For the January 2026 edition, Sustainable Innovations once again brings together projects that question, provoke, and expand the future of textiles.<\/p>\n

When you curate SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS, what tells you a project is genuinely worth platforming, beyond novelty or technical achievement?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel: For me, novelty by itself is never enough, I always search behind the curtains, looking for stories, paradoxes, pain, pleasure and purpose. Technical achievement is important, but it is only a starting point. What I look for is whether a project asks an honest question about how we live, make, and value. <\/p>\n

A project becomes worth platforming when it shows responsibility towards material, culture, and consequence. That responsibility can take many forms. In Marie Vilay\u2019s work, it appears as care for knowledge, authorship, and continuity. In Materia Futura, it emerges as a refusal to accept that sustainability must look deprived or emotionally flat. In Threaded Protocols, it shows up as a quiet but powerful re-examination of how technology itself is constructed. <\/p>\n

What connects them is not perfection, but intention. They are not trying to impress the industry. They are trying to understand it, and sometimes to gently disturb it; reframing or disrupt the \u2018pattern\u2019 of the industry. That is where I feel Sustainable Innovations has its real value. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

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Many of the projects you select are not market-ready products. Why is it important, in your view, for an industry-focused fair to make space for unfinished or exploratory work? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel:<\/strong> Because the future does not arrive fully packaged. If we only show what is ready for market, we only ever validate what already fits existing systems. Sustainable Innovations exists precisely to create space for what does not yet fit. Exploratory work allows us to see where thinking is moving before it becomes constrained by commercial frameworks. It is therefore an invitation to explore and to inspire. Projects like Materia Futura or Threaded Protocols are not trying to sell a product. They are offering a shift in perception. They allow the industry to engage with material, technology, and responsibility at a conceptual level before those ideas harden into supply chains and price points. An industry that only looks at finished solutions risks losing its ability to imagine better ones. <\/p>\n

Looking at this year\u2019s exhibitors, what do you feel they have in common?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel<\/strong>: What they share is a deep awareness that textiles are not neutral. Whether it is Marie Vilay questioning how textile knowledge travels across cultures or Materia Futura reclaiming sensory desire in bio-based materials, each project understands textiles as carriers of history, power, emotion, and choice. They are not interested in materials as surfaces alone. They are interested in materials as systems of meaning. And importantly, none of them treats sustainability as a technical checklist. They treat it as a cultural responsibility. Textile with layers of different understandings, functions and conscious. <\/p>\n

Many innovations struggle at the point of scale. What responsibility, if any, do curators and platforms have in addressing that gap? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel:<\/strong> We cannot solve scale for innovators, but we can change how scale is understood.<\/p>\n

Too often, scale is presented as the only measure of success. But some projects are not meant to scale in the conventional sense. Their value lies in how they influence thinking, education, or future processes. As curators, our responsibility is to provide context. To connect exploratory work with industry actors who can interpret, adapt, or carry those ideas forward responsibly. To prevent innovation from being consumed only as trend material. Scale should be a conversation, a question mark maybe, but not a demand. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

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Across the projects this season, what assumptions about textiles or fashion do you think the industry most needs to unlearn?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel: <\/strong>That sustainability must look modest, technical, or restrained. That innovation must be fast. That materials are separate from culture. That efficiency is always progress. The projects being presented should remind us that desire is not the enemy of sustainability. The industry must unlearn the idea that responsibility is a limitation. It is, in fact, a creative force. <\/p>\n

If the wider industry took just one lesson from this year\u2019s SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS, what would you want it to be?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon Angel:<\/strong> That innovation is not only about what we make, but about how we choose to make meaning. Sustainable Innovations is not a showroom of answers. It is an invitation to think differently. To slow down. To notice. To question. To reconnect material with intention. If the industry leaves with a renewed sense of responsibility towards both material and imagination, then the platform is doing its job. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

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About the author<\/h4>\n

Founding editor-in-chief of Shape Innovate<\/a>, Muchaneta has worked in the fashion industry for over 14 years. She is currently one of the leading influencers speaking and writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. <\/p>\n

Muchaneta ten Napel | m@shapeinnovate.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me, novelty by itself is never enough, I always search behind the curtains, looking for stories, paradoxes, pain, pleasure and purpose. Technical achievement is important, but it is only a starting point. What I look for is whether a project asks an honest question about how we live, make, and value. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"mfs_topic":[91,90],"class_list":["post-8232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"display_title":"","meta_title":"Interview with Simon Angel | MFS","meta_description":"Curator Simon Angel on the SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS at KEYHOUSE: the projects that stand out to him and how they challenge the future of textiles.","meta_image":8234,"canonical_url":"","meta_robots_noindex":false,"meta_robots_nofollow":false,"thumbnail":{"media_type":"image","image":8234,"video":{"source_type":"select_video_from_library","library":null,"poster":null,"embed":"","embed_video_options":[],"video_options":[]}},"excerpt":"For me, novelty by itself is never enough, I always search behind the curtains, looking for stories, paradoxes, pain, pleasure and purpose. Technical achievement is important, but it is only a starting point. What I look for is whether a project asks an honest question about how we live, make, and value. "},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8235,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions\/8235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"mfs_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munichfabricstart.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mfs_topic?post=8232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}