You may know the pineapple as a sweet fiber-enriched fruit, but did you know that its leaves are now used to produce a textile?
Spanish designer Carmen Hijosa visited the Philippines to look for an alternative to leather. There she noticed that some products such as bags and shoes were made out of the pineapple leaves. It was then that Hijosa started researching the means to develop a durable textile.
After 7 years of laborious research, Hijosa and her team created what is known as Piñatex, a sustainable textile made out of the fibers from the leaves of a pineapple plant.
Piñatex is created by turning pineapple fibers into a mesh through a combination of certain mechanical and chemical processes. Hijosa made sure that the end result is a textile which can match leather in terms of durability.
Popular shoemakers such as Puma and Camper have made shoe prototypes using Piñatex. Some of the prototypes created by Puma were featured at The Pineapple Show exhibition, held at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London last December. Attendees of the exhibition witnessed the production of the textile.
The Spanish designer is confident that Piñatex is a potential product that can compete with leather and petroleum based textiles.
