New York State is backing 12 projects with a total of $120,000 to turn the state's wool, flax, hemp and agricultural waste into commercial materials. The New York Fashion Innovation Center (NYFIC) announced its fourth round of grants, with each project receiving $10,000, covering fiber processing, biomaterials, product development and workforce training.

The individual amounts are not large, and most products remain at the prototype or small-batch stage, but together these projects target several bottlenecks in the flow of locally grown fibers between farms, spinning mills, designers and manufacturers.

On the fiber processing side, Adrienne Carlile of Flax Fiber Farm in Cochecton plans to retrofit existing small-scale spinning equipment to spin flax and hemp grown in New York State, with an expected output of four bast fiber yarn prototypes. Brooklyn-based Finiks Forge is taking a different route: founder Luca Cera intends to extract keratin from wool waste generated by New York farms, factories and processors to develop regenerated fibers for yarns and other textiles.

Li Jiang and Lihong Lao of Syracuse University will turn low-grade wool into BioWool batting and linings for quilted garments and bags. Long Island also has two projects centered on local wool: Hog Farm hopes to connect local growers with home textile production, while Mama Farm will create a farm-to-fiber curriculum for fashion and textile students.

Not all projects start from the farm. Aradhita Parasrampuria, founder of Brooklyn company Cellsense, received funding to produce two commercial capsule collections using compostable beads and embellishments made from algae and cellulose, positioned as plastic-free alternatives to traditional sequins and beading. Also in Brooklyn, MushLume Lighting will develop and test a compostable acoustic wall system combining mycelium with hemp, recycled wool and state agricultural byproducts.

Other grants lean more toward product development: Brooklyn brand LowLou will scale up production of sauna hats made from wool grown and processed in New York; Mechanicville-based Flock & Loom will create a limited-edition patterned blanket collection from state wool. The remaining projects include The Bad Juju Design's upcycled clothing and community sewing program, the expansion of Bronx Fashion NYC's youth workforce program, and a study on barriers to getting more New York wool into the textile supply chain.

"The focus of this round is turning overlooked materials into opportunity," said Susan Easton, NYFIC's director of product and marketing. "From low-grade wool and farm byproducts to algae and mycelium, these grantees are creating the products, markets and connections needed for New York's textile industry to grow."

The grant program is part of the Fashion Innovation Center, supported by a $9 million state investment announced in 2023 and managed by a consortium led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose members include the Fashion Institute of Technology, Hudson Valley Textile Project, SUNY Morrisville, Made X Hudson and The Field to Fiber Company. With the latest batch, NYFIC has supported 36 projects. Grantees also receive mentorship, sourcing connections and access to a three-month accelerator focused on customer discovery, business plans and go-to-market strategy. They will later have access to NYFIC's Textile Innovation Lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is scheduled to open to the public this fall and is equipped for fiber prototyping, testing and product development. Applications for the fifth and final round of $10,000 sustainable textile innovation grants will open on October 30 and close on January 6, 2027; NYFIC is also planning a separate adaptive fashion grant program for 2027.

For the used-clothing and recycled-fiber industry, the significance of such small state-level grants lies in redefining "waste" as raw material: wool scraps, low-grade wool and agricultural byproducts are being channeled into the production paths of regenerated fibers and compostable materials, precisely the missing link upstream in the textile circularity chain.

Source: New York Backs Algae Sequins, Wool Waste in Textile Push · Originally published 2026-09-22