< img src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/pompom-stool-made-from-recycled-aluminum-is-green-design-done-right/alice-stool-07.jpg"alt= ""width= "1280" height ="960"/ > Sustainable style has a branding issue. Not a principles problem, not a products problem, but a branding issue. For several years, the conversation around circular products and accountable production has actually been covered in language that seems like a lecture. Deserving, yes. Amazing, seldom. So when a stool shows up at Alcova during Milan Design Week appearing like a bouquet of pompoms crowning a cluster of dreamy pastel cylinders, it stops you mid-stride. That stool is the Alice Stool by Studio LoopLoop, and it’s making an extremely peaceful however extremely pointed argument.
Established in 2022 by Odin Visser and Charles Gateau, Studio LoopLoop is a Dutch practice that operates someplace between science lab and style studio. Their approach is hands-on and deliberately self-sufficient, developing their own processes instead of outsourcing to industrial systems they ‘d rather move away from. For Alice, that method produced something that looks almost nothing like what we typically envision when somebody states “sustainable furniture.”
Designer: Studio LoopLoop
The base of the stool is made from 100%recycled aluminium, specifically Hydro 100R extrusions, and coloured utilizing a plant-based anodising technique the studio developed in-house. The result is a range of subtle colour gradients that shift from soft sage to deep plum to warm yellow, attained through managed dyeing rather than chemical baths heavy with petrochemical inputs. The seat is upholstered with Savian by Bio-Fluff, a plant-based faux fur hand-dyed with NIG natural pigments. The combination is tactile in a manner that feels practically irrational for a piece of furniture. You wish to touch it. You most likely want to sit on it and not get up.
And that’s exactly the point. Studio LoopLoop entitled their Alcova discussion”Alice Atomicus, “a nod to both Lewis Carroll’s dreamlike world and the idea of material aspects reorganized into something brand-new and totally unanticipated. Sustainability, they’re saying, doesn’t need to show up in a brown paper wrapper with a regret trip attached. It can be lively. It can be sexy. It can be soft and sculptural and truly desirable.
< img src ="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/pompom-stool-made-from-recycled-aluminum-is-green-design-done-right/alice-stool-04.jpg"alt=""width="1280"height="1600"/ >< img src="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%201600%22%3E%3C/svg%3E "data-src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/pompom-stool-made-from-recycled-aluminum-is-green-design-done-right/alice-stool-04.jpg"alt=" "width="1280" height= "1600 "/ > I believe this matters more than it may seem. The design market has spent years making the case that circular materials can be premium, which case has mostly been won. But the psychological argument is trickier. If sustainable design feels like an obligation instead of a satisfaction, it will constantly occupy a specific niche, appreciated from a range but rarely selected with interest. The Alice Stool feels like a real effort to close that space, to make the accountable choice the one you in fact desire due to the fact that it’s stunning, not just because it’s correct.
The use of Savian deserves pausing on. Bio-Fluff’s plant-based fur made its development in fashion through partnerships with Collina Strada, Martine Rose, and Louis Vuitton, discovering a grip in a luxury market that was currently beginning to reassess its relationship with animal products. Moving into furniture seems like a natural extension, and the Alice Stool is among the clearest demonstrations of Savian’s material capacity outside of a clothes rack. Versus cool metal cylinders, the fur checks out as something almost otherworldly. It’s plush in such a way that artificial faux fur normally isn’t, and the hand-dyed variation in the seat suggests no two stools look exactly alike.
That detail matters to me personally. Mass production has its place, however there’s a real cultural cravings right now for objects that bring the trace of human hands. The Alice Stool has that quality in abundance. The graduated aluminium tones, the minor unpredictability of natural dye, the tactile kindness of the seat, together they suggest something made with attention instead of performance as the main value.
Studio LoopLoop is a young studio, only 4 years old, however they’re working with a clearness of vision that feels well ahead of their timeline. The Alice Stool isn’t a concept piece hedged with cautions. It’s a fully formed things that asks a simple concern: why should doing the ideal thing look boring? The response, obviously, is that it doesn’t have to.
< img src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/pompom-stool-made-from-recycled-aluminum-is-green-design-done-right/alice-stool-01.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="1600"/ > < img src ="// www.w3.org/2000/svg%22%20viewBox=%220%200%201280%201600%22%3E%3C/svg%3E" data-src="https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2026/05/pompom-stool-made-from-recycled-aluminum-is-green-design-done-right/alice-stool-01.jpg" alt ="" width="1280" height="1600"/ >