Aesop & OTHER MATTER—A Material Endeavour

Part of Melbourne Design Week 2025, Aesop and OTHER MATTER invite visitors into a quiet revolution—exploring a future shaped without petrochemicals, where design becomes an act of repair.

Words HANDE RENSHAW Photos GOOD GRIEF PRODUCTIONS

Jessie French inside Aesop Collins Street—standing beneath one of the algae-based bioplastic installations for A Material Endeavour, part of this year’s Melbourne Design Week.

The A Material Endeavour installation reimagines Aesop’s retail window as a living canvas during Melbourne Design Week.

Jessie French working with algae-based bioplastic in her Naarm studio. The material—central to A Material Endeavour—is hand-formed, heat-activated, and endlessly reworkable, offering a glimpse into a regenerative design future.

Jessie French unrolls sheets of algae-based bioplastic inside Aesop Collins Street. Her process transforms material preparation into a quiet act of design-led resistance.

The A Material Endeavour installation blurs the line between ritual, material innovation, and retail theatre.

In the studio, algae becomes alchemy. Jessie French lifts a sheet of bioplastic from its liquid state—an act that speaks to both experimentation and transformation at the heart of A Material Endeavour.

As part of Melbourne Design Week 2025, Aesop continues its thoughtful collaboration with OTHER MATTER—the experimental materials studio founded by Naarm-based artist and designer Jessie French.

The project, titled A Material Endeavour, unfolds as a four-part, self-guided city trail that explores the potential of a post-petrochemical future.

Spanning from 15 to 25 May, the journey begins at Aesop Flinders Lane and weaves through Collins Street and David Jones Bourke Street, concluding at Aesop QV, where visitors are met with a moment of tactile engagement.

At the core of this initiative is Jessie’s pioneering algae-based bioplastic—a transparent, reusable material applied to store windows as delicate decals. In place of traditional PVC signage, these shimmering forms offer a radical alternative, forming part of a closed-loop system that can be removed, repurposed and reused without waste.

Each location serves as a pause. Visitors are invited not only to view but to take part—by peeling an algae-based bottle motif from the final installation and applying it to a flat surface at home, they become temporary custodians of a material future. On Saturday 17 May, Jessie will host a guided tour through the four installations, contextualising the collaboration and tracing its deeper undercurrents: sustainability, design as activism, and the healing potential of material innovation.

The partnership, now in its second year, reflects a shared commitment between Aesop and OTHER MATTER to explore new ways of making, displaying and interacting with objects. Grounded in this year’s Melbourne Design Week theme—Heal, Replenish and Enable Life—the work reminds us that even the most familiar retail spaces can be transformed into laboratories of change.

Through algae and glass, gesture and care, A Material Endeavour doesn’t just imagine a world after petrochemicals—it quietly begins to build one.

*Due to high demand, the complimentary gift has now been exhausted. However, the exhibition continues. Aesop and OTHER MATTER invite you to discover the material possibilities of a post-petrochemical world at Aesop Flinders Lane, Collins Street, David Jones Bourke Street and QV this Melbourne Design Week.

For more information and a link to register for a guided tour with OTHER MATTER founder Jessie French can be found here.