How Caroline Zimbalist Is Making Her One-of-a-Kind Bioplastic Designs More Accessible – Latest Fashion Trends & Style Tips February 14, 2026 at 12:54AM

February 13, 2026

📰 How Caroline Zimbalist Is Making Her One-of-a-Kind Bioplastic Designs More Accessible

✨ Fashion Insights & Trends:

Since expanding her abstract sculptural work into a wearable line of art in 2022, Caroline Zimbalist has learned a lot about adapting to her customer base — both in the fine art world and fashion space.

"I feel that the customer who's purchasing my art is an elevated customer looking for elevated wear," the designer told Fashionista at her Thursday afternoon New York Fashion Week presentation (her first time on the official CFDA calendar!). "The vessels [her signature vases made from bio-plastics and sold at the Whitney Museum] really read luxury, so I felt that the fabrication should also be cohesive to that."

For the last few years, Zimbalist's brand has been almost exclusively selling pieces made from the unique biomaterial recipe she developed, including jewelry and custom items such as chestplates and gowns. As special as those designs are, given that the designer hand-makes each batch of the material and personally molds every garment that incorporates it, they don't easily scale into a sustainable business operation. Currently, Zimbalist's one-of-a-kind bioplastic garments are priced between $400 and $2,100 on her website.

With this in mind, Zimbalist's priorities shifted in the lead-up to Fall 2026: "We're introducing tailored trousers. We have these more feminine dresses with prints and then using the biomaterial now truly as an embellishment," she explained. This way, the bioplastic still plays a leading role in the brand's identity, but is less of an obstacle for wholesale and commercial opportunities.

"The hero print of the season is a speckled flower, playing on the speckled vessels," she explained, pointing to poplin, Peter-Pan collared, asymmetric button-up blouses and silk maxi dresses. "Everything has been patterned and done. So, yes. These are all styles that could be bought. It's really happening."

Getting to a more affordable price point is a priority: Zimbalist estimates that this new line of non-bespoke ready-to-wear will all retail for under $300. "It's either 100% cotton or 100% silk this season, and cotton's not expensive. But it's great quality and it's comfortable," she notes.

Aside from the more wearable, everyday looks in this collection, Zimbalist still wowed her attendees with a selection of sculpted ensembles. A black bioplastic bodice with a hand-painted floral motif flowing across the front acts as the centerpiece to a dark bridal outfit, a three-dimensional bouquet emerges from a mesh nightgown and the more flexible version of the biomaterial functions as piping around a tank top.

"I'm an artist at heart, so I'll always have my heart and my vessels and be exploring the biomaterial in that way, but I felt that if I really wanted to be, at the end of the day, a successful American designer in the United States, I really do have to commercialize," Zimbalist said. "Making it a lot more accessible, I just felt was the next chapter I had to go for."

See every look from Caroline Zimbalist's Fall 2026 collection below.