# Designer Olivia Cueva of Oakland Style Lab on the overlapping of biomaterials research, fashion design, & community-centered education as a multifaceted approach to rethinking fashion's systems

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/conscious-chatter-322689/designer-olivia-cueva-of-oakland-style-lab-on-the-overlapping-of-biomaterials-research-fashion-design-community-centered-education-as-a-multifaceted-approach-to-rethinking-fashion-s-systems
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/conscious-chatter-322689/designer-olivia-cueva-of-oakland-style-lab-on-the-overlapping-of-biomaterials-research-fashion-design-community-centered-education-as-a-multifaceted-approach-to-rethinking-fashion-s-systems.md
Podcast: [Conscious Chatter](https://stenobird.com/podcast/conscious-chatter-322689)
Published: 2026-07-14T16:53:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.consciouschatter.com/podcast/2026/7/14-episode-342-olivia-cueva-biomaterials-fashion-oakland-style-lab
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/consciouschatter/CC_342_Olivia_Cueva_Oakland_Style_Lab_Biomaterials_Fashion_Design_Community_Education.mp3?dest-id=523042
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Duration seconds: 3284

## Resource

In Episode 342, Kestrel welcomes Olivia Cueva, a radical dreamer, designer, technologist, and researcher, to the show. Olivia's work bridges creative technology, fashion, biomaterials, and storytelling to explore transformation, regeneration, and collective care. Her practice moves fluidly between community-centered education, speculative design, and research into sustainable and bio-based materials—always with the aim of sparking dialogue, nurturing resilience, and envisioning more just futures. "A lot of the research that I do now is focused on natural dyes and working with plants and seeing how the natural dyes that we would maybe normally use on natural fibers actually translate to biomaterials. it's been a really amazing process of returning or like sort of remembering ancestry in a way … when I'm working with a certain plant, I'm actually not just looking at its color properties, but I'm also researching what is the story of this plant? How has it been used in different indigenous cultures?" -Olivia THEME — EXPANSIONS AROUND MATERIALITY TO RETHINK FASHION'S SYSTEMS Before we dive in this week, I want to share a massive thank you and shout out to my friend Denali Joie, who was featured back on episode 312. Denali helped connect me with this week's guest after meeting her in Brazil at a conference. You can listen to my episode with Denali here > I am so grateful for this connection as it led to this week's guest's cofounder attending the Design For Compliance workshop Gabi and I hosted at UC Berkeley through Fashion Is Outrageous, and led to the amazing conversation that you're about to hear. Sometimes, we don't slow down enough to realize how these tiny links lead to really beautiful future moments, and I just wanted to take a moment to honor Denali and the way th…

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