Milan Design Week 2025
The Lichen Hat is a collaborative project that weaves together traditional hat-making and lichen-based natural dyeing to craft a capsule collection of one-of-a-kind, eco-conscious hats. Made from artisanal wool and upcycled plant fiber fabrics, each piece reflects a deep respect for nature, heritage, and slow craftsmanship.
At its core, this project is a response to the urgency of rethinking fashion. It embraces sustainability not just as a practice, but as a value, promoting a mindful, culturally rooted alternative to mass production. Through the combination of botanical research, natural dye techniques, and time-honored hat-making skills, The Lichen Hat celebrates the quiet power of handmade objects.
This journey, from fieldwork and color extraction to form and texture, is both artistic exploration and cultural storytelling. Each hat carries traces of the land, the hands, and the time that shaped it. Inspired by a shared passion for sustainability and craftsmanship, the project reimagines traditional techniques, experiments with innovative lichen dyes, and challenges the expectations of contemporary fashion.
More than just a collection, The Lichen Hat is a statement, a call to honor craft, preserve cultural knowledge, and reconnect with the natural world. Through an exhibition, a chromatic atlas, and a short documentary, the project seeks to inspire a shift toward more conscious textile production, where creativity meets care, and every piece tells a deeper story.
Here are some of the ideas that have helped us give meaning to the concept behind this collection:
Lichens challenge the notion that we are singular beings with clearly defined boundaries. Where does one organism end and another begin? What does it mean to be an autonomous individual? What is identity?
We are holobionts: organisms made up of many other organisms. It’s mind-blowing to realize that our bodies contain more microbial cells than human ones. We are more “other” than “self.”
Our identity is woven from bacteria, viruses, inherited genes… and relationships with everything around us. Even our immune system—which we might think defines us—is actually busy negotiating coexistence.
Perhaps we are continuities, not entities. Porous boundaries. Living frontiers.
Like lichens, we are alliances in constant transformation. What we understood as a “being” might just be a temporary form of cooperation.
Lichen-inspired conclusion:
We are not islands, we are archipelagos.
There is no “I” without others.
Each of us is a traveling community, a node in the network, a part of the whole.
Photography by Dario Cervellin, Giulia Ferraris
GIULIA FERRARIS FROM ATELIER VETRA
As the colour curator, she led the natural dyeing process, drawing from several weeks of botanical study in the high-altitude landscapes of Northeast Italy. With the support of local experts, she responsibly foraged lichens and explored their hidden dye potential, building a rich archive of colours—eventually transformed into a unique palette of textiles that made their way into the hands of the hatmakers.
At the end of her research, she created the Lichen Color Atlas as a testament to this enriching journey into lichen dyes. This harmonium-shaped archive contains over 15 pages of lichen-dyed swatches on various fibers, made between last August and January. It traces every step, from early experiments to final tests, documenting both successes and failures along the way.
While it doesn’t claim to offer definitive answers, the atlas stands as a detailed record of her ongoing exploration as a natural dyer. It’s a humble snapshot of where she is now—a beginner, still learning—and a foundation for future discoveries in this endlessly fascinating craft.
Check Atelier Vetra’s page to discover her textile creations
This project is part of the WORTH Partnership Project, funded by the European Union, which aims to foster innovation and sustainability through collaboration among creative partners across Europe.