Pangaia scales bio-based performance wear with new Courtside Capsule

The real question behind Pangaia’s Courtside Capsule is simple: can bio-based activewear actually stretch, recover and wear like the fossil-fuel synthetics that still dominate the category? The new SS26 drop is built around (gaia)BioStretch, a fabric that blends biobased nylon with plant-derived elastane, and it lands as a direct challenge to the idea that sustainable materials have to compromise on performance.

Pangaia has made that gamble its identity. Founded in 2019 and certified as a B Corp, the company describes itself as a materials science brand built to scale innovative tech and bio-engineered materials into everyday clothing. Its own SS26 activewear language is blunt about the ambition: “Set the pace without plastic.” The line is presented as “plant-based, naturally non-toxic and sculpted for a second-skin feel,” which is exactly the standard bio-based performance wear has struggled to meet in practice.

This is not Pangaia’s first run at that problem. In 2025, the brand launched 365 Seamless Activewear using 100 percent bio-based EVO Nylon from Fulgar and Hyosung TNC’s regen BIO Max elastane. Hyosung says regen BIO Max is made with 98 percent renewable resources, including corn-based feedstock, and says Pangaia was the first brand globally to bring it into a commercial activewear range. Hyosung also says it was the first company to commercially introduce USDA- and SGS-certified bio-based elastane with 30 percent renewable content at scale in 2022, a material that later turned up in Pangaia and Icebreaker products.

The experiment goes back further. Earlier Pangaia activewear used 99.99 percent plant-based EVO Nylon and 30 percent plant-based creora elastane, a combination the brand and Hyosung positioned as a first-of-its-kind offer. Pangaia’s earlier (gaia)PLNT Nylon capsule pushed the idea even harder, using 100 percent biobased nylon derived from castor oil. Italian mill Olmetex processed Fulgar’s polymer into fabric for that line, which matters because the story is no longer only about invention, but about who can turn a promising polymer into wearable cloth at scale.

That scaling question is where Pangaia becomes more than a niche premium label. The broader activewear market still leans heavily on virgin synthetics, and the sector’s rush into waterless dyeing, plastic-free rubber and sugarcane-derived elastane suggests real pressure to find alternatives that perform in the real world, not just in a lab. Pangaia has the revenue history to keep pressing the case, with one industry profile putting its 2020 turnover at US$75 million during the pandemic loungewear boom. It also has fresh management muscle, after naming former Inditex director Daniel Gómez Rojas as CEO in 2025.

For now, Courtside Capsule reads less like a finished answer than a serious materials test. If (gaia)BioStretch wears clean, recovers well and lasts, it could help move bio-based performance fabric from brand statement to category standard. If it does not, it will still leave Pangaia where it has long wanted to be, at the center of the next materials race.