Dress made of orange peel at the GROW exhibition coming to Budapest

The GROW pop-up exhibition of the Dutch Fashion for Good Museum is coming to Hungary from March 13 to 25. The interactive exhibition showcasing clothes and accessories made from sustainable bio-materials - such as banana fibre, orange and coconut shells - will be held at the campus of Budapest Metropolitan University. 

GROW is the travelling exhibition of the Amsterdam based Fashion for Good Museum. The exhibition first run in Amsterdam from 2021 to 2022 and was recently shown in Denmark in February 2023. The exhibition presents biomaterials used in fashion through never-before-seen clothing and accessories made from sustainable materials and gives a truly immersive experience to visitors through an interactive game. With the aim to inspire the next generation of fashion designers and consumers, the exhibition is touring schools across Europe. In Hungary, the venue of GROW will be the art campus of Budapest Metropolitan University. 



The Fashion for Good Museum has invited young fashion designers to use nature's potential to create clothing and accessories that demonstrate how bio-materials can be used in fashion and textiles. Dutch designers Huong Nguyen, Frederieke Broekgaarden, Eva Sonneveld and Charlotte Bakkenes used banana fibre, coconut husk, cork dust and other alternative materials to showcase the potential of innovative materials in fashion. One of the most extraordinary piece of the GROW exhibition is the creation of fashion designer and illustrator Karim Adduchi, a unique silk dress made of orange peel, which visitors can feel with their own hands as well. 

"The GROW exhibition highlights the fact that although nature is often the source of inspiration for fashion, the current industry is overexploiting natural resources. The way the industry works needs to change - and an important part of this change are the new, more sustainable materials that can now be seen up close." – shared Anna Kudron, main organiser of the exhibition in Budapest, professor of Budapest Metropolitan University’s Art and Design Theory Institute and student mentor of the Art and Design Management MA program’s Fashion management specialization. – “Fashion designers and managers of the future will play a key role in the change of this industry. At Budapest Metropolitan University, we teach with this in mind, and we motivate our students to consider aspects of sustainability in their creative work.” 

The development of bio-materials is well underway – however, they are still largely unknown to the general public as they are not yet available in mainstream stores. Nevertheless, they have an important role to play in the future of the fashion industry. The GROW exhibition thus aims to raise awareness of these materials. These efforts are boosted by an interactive game that is part of the exhibition. Through the game and app developed by Allthings.bioPRO, visitors are able to explore the world of biomaterials and can learn in a fun and interesting way. Players who successfully answer the quiz questions in the game can save a digital city from environmental pollution and complete the mission to become a BioHero. 



The free GROW exhibition will be on display from 13-25 March in the glass hall of the Rózsa Street campus of Budapest Metropolitan University, from Monday to Saturday between 10am and 6pm. The exhibition is closed on 15 March.  

The exhibition is part of the Allthings.bioPRO project funded by EU Horizon 2020.