When Natalia Allen graduated from New York’s Parsons The New School of Design in 2004 as Designer of the Year – following in the footsteps of Marc Jacobs and Proenza Schouler duo Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough – she could have sashayed into almost any top fashion house.

She didn’t. Citing disillusionment with the “basic” nature of her course, Allen chose another tack. Previously intent on becoming a doctor, she chased intellectual respite by adding a social sciences component to her degree and retreating to the library, seeking answers to how science and technology could be applied to her profession’s archaic sourcing, production, design and marketing processes, many of which had not materially changed for hundreds of years.

Although the fashion industry as it stood was not for her, Allen became obsessed with the enormous potential to shake things up from the inside, to create a new end-to-model that was “more modern, more sustainable”.

“The traditional season-to-season, collection-to-collection approach is broken,” she asserts. “You can’t be too bizarre, but there is an opportunity within those extreme poles to deliver something new that’s viable as a business.” With few options to pursue her sustainable design ideals, Allen struck out alone in 2005, launching Design Futurist, an eco-fashion consultancy based in New York City.

One of the company’s first clients was Donna Karan, for whom the start-up created a “high performance” range using compact fibres, as well as new methods for product construction. It wasn’t long before Allen was advising fashion giant Calvin Klein, the expanding surfwear label Quiksilver and the upscale department store Saks Fifth Avenue. She was also charged with designing a hip range for the fusty department-store chain Nordstrom.

“Being able to mainstream the appeal of a designer collection for something that looks fantastic on all sorts of women and is environmentally friendly is really exciting,” she notes.

Allen’s products incorporate innovative textiles that come about through laboratorial inspiration and/or scientific collaboration, and techniques such as laser cutting, seam bonding and computer-aided design. Calvin Klein’s denim was given an American industrial-rust effect with a proprietary dye. Another project helped the fashion-forward stand out further via light-emitting photoluminescent sportswear.

Her influence is not confined to the world of fashion, though, with major corporations such as Procter & Gamble, DuPont, Philips and BT also signing up for her eco-inspiration.

Allen says that what she does is ascertain her clients ‘“painpoints”. The key is to understanding every aspect of the design cycle, where the companies want to position themselves and what role innovation and sustainability will play in the brand messaging. “I never want to become the type of design consultant that has a box-tick solution like: ‘Okay, what you need to do is green this with organic cotton and add waterproof fabric to that,’” she explains. “I’m interested in getting inside my customers’ minds and lives and in understanding – as someone with an affinity for technology, design and aesthetics and who is conscious about the environment – how that can be wrapped in a package that delivers something really new, useful and desirable.” She says once she has a sense of where the client wants to go, it is “skunk work” time until the sustainable and commercial opportunities are clearly mapped out. Allen claims that where many other fashion designers tend to tamper with the surface, she digs deeper to reconfigure tradition without greenwash or gimmickry.

Allen’s latest experiment is a collaboration with scientist Stephen Miller, creating non-petroleum-based polymers from plant matter. The venture has won a Young Scientist/Entrepreneur Partnership Award from IAP Global Network and interest from potential industrial partners. “This is a beautiful opportunity in the fashion industry as synthetics are the fastest-growing segment of the textiles space,” she says.

This way of working is typical for Allen, who professes to spend at least half of her time in R&D mode in order to continually forge new ways of doing and making. “When I started, everything was new and exciting and a lot of the technology I’ve developed, such as integrated computers in clothing, was so futuristic and advanced. Now I’ve been able to take that same methodology, that same approach to design and help to do things that are good for people and the planet.” Her unorthodox attitude to design has not gone unnoticed: she is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a fixture at conferences and events (recent passport stamps include the UAE, Switzerland, China and Saudi Arabia).

While her starting position may be at the cutting edge, Allen is adamant she wants to create products that burst out of the green niches to reach the largest possible audience. Her impact on the $500bn global clothing industry can only trend upward as demands for more robust and transparent eco-credentials grow ever stronger; a recent report by venture accelerator cKinetics noted that by the end of 2011, all major textile brands and retailers will have announced initiatives that involve working with a more sustainable supply chain. “Sustainability now tends to look very sustainable,” she says. “I hope to be a fresh voice that says: ‘Here are ecologically friendly, socially responsible products’ – that’s the benefit, but they are first and foremost just incredible design.“

Design Futurist has three major confidential projects on its books, but Allen’s next milestone will be to bring out her own fashion line, although she is coy about the details. “It’s a bit early to get too much into the weeds but it is a really exciting time,” she says. “All I’ll say is the business model is 110% new. People will be surprised about how things will unwrap and I’d like it to stay that way.”