Samantha Mureau
Samantha Mureau is Founder of Planet of the Grapes, Socially Responsible and Sustainable Fashion Management Course Curator, Professor, and Guest Lecturer at the IAU Institute for American Universities and the IUT of Aix-Marseille University, Education Coordinator for France at Fashion Revolution, and Professional Speaker at Campus Eductive Aix en Provence.
Based in Aix-en-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southern France, Sam works at the intersection of viticulture, circular material innovation, and luxury design, transforming grape by-products into high-value materials for fashion, accessories, lifestyle, hospitality, and transport.
Sam founded Planet of the Grapes in October 2020 as a next-generation biomaterials company that collects grape marc — the skins, seeds, and stems left after grapes are pressed for wine — from partner organic châteaux and domaines across Provence, transforms it locally, and sends it to a manufacturing partner in Milan, Italy, to be converted into her signature biomaterials for fashion, design, and lifestyle applications.
The company’s flagship biomaterial line, Savigne by Planet of the Grapes®, is designed to be EU REACH compliant, 100% animal-free, traceable, and rooted in a short, planet-respectful supply chain with grape marc collected and processed within a 500-kilometre radius of Aix-en-Provence. The materials currently contain up to 80.5% bio-sourced content and have achieved top scores in ISO tear strength, Bally flex, Veslic abrasion, water-drop resistance, and sunlight tests.
Read Planet of the Grapes: The Future of Sustainable Materials is Found in a Vineyard. When fashion faces the future: The biomaterials startups going back to nature. and Meng Du creates Unwasted bags from grape leather.
Planet of the Grapes has been supported by programmes including BPI France, the French Tech ecosystem, the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, and the European Union’s COSME programme through the Small but Perfect circular fashion accelerator, a collaborative project cofunded by the European Commission to help fashion SMEs transition to circular and sustainable business models. The company is certified with Positive Luxury’s Butterfly Mark, an independent ESG+ trust mark awarded to luxury brands meeting rigorous environmental, social, governance, and innovation criteria.
Sam has developed early collaborations with partners including Swedish non-alcoholic wine producer Oddbird and designer Meng Du on the Unwasted project, and with sustainable accessories label Under Her Eyes on the Odette luxury bag.
Read Designer creates vegan-leather bags from leftover grape skins. Bags Made From Grape Leather Created by Meng Du. and Meet The Entrepreneurs Designing Fashion’s Circular Future.
Alongside her work as a Founder, Sam has been the Socially Responsible and Sustainable Fashion Management Course Curator, Professor, and Guest Lecturer at the IAU Institute for American Universities and the IUT of Aix-Marseille University since January 2017, where she has written and delivered the Accredited Socially Responsible and Sustainable Fashion Management Course for American and French students as well as guest lectures on French and American campuses. She also leads a module titled What is French Luxury Today? for visiting American undergraduates.
In April 2022, she became a Professional Speaker for Masters and Bachelor sustainable business programs and seminars at Campus Eductive Aix en Provence, teaching in English and French across Sustainable Purchasing, Brand Identity and Strategy, Strategic Marketing, Design Thinking, Intercultural Management, and Country Risk Management, and sitting on the jury for Circular Economy final presentations.
Sam has also served as Fashion Revolution Education Coordinator for France since January 2017, supporting Fashion Revolution’s campaign to reform the global fashion industry in the aftermath of the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh — the event that Sam has described as her turning point into sustainability and circular design.
Between 2019 and 2025, she taught Professional and Formal Business English on the International Management Bachelor Degree at ESSCA School of Management’s Aix-en-Provence campus, and between 2017 and 2022 she was Professor for the Bachelor and BTS Environmental Science and the Bachelor of Nutrition and Wellness English modules at Cours Diderot in Aix-en-Provence, where she wrote the Bachelor programme for the Diderot Education Campuses across France and taught regenerative farming, biodiversity, natural carbon sinks, plastic pollution, and nutrition and wellness.
Between 2016 and 2020, Sam was a Director at Serious Shea SARL, a consortium of agribusiness, forestry, clean technology, and retail experts building a network of Eco-Processing Centres in Burkina Faso to enable local women’s cooperatives to process shea butter with 100% renewables and full transparency from tree to end product.
Earlier in her career, Sam founded and directed Trendline (Europe) Limited between 2005 and 2018, a multi-disciplinary business development agency offering bespoke trend sourcing, reporting, and consultancy services across the fashion, interiors, and lifestyle industries for international retailers and designers, including Victoria’s Secret, Victoria’s Secret Beauty, Bath and Body Works, and Foschini in South Africa.
Between 2011 and 2015 she also founded and ran Dovetail-Living, an online luxury homewares and lifestyle boutique supporting independent European designers and artisans. From 2000 to 2005, Sam was Trend Manager at Limited Brands, sourcing and reporting continuously on fashion, accessories, and lingerie trends from Europe for the CEO, President, and Design Directors of Express, Womenswear, Limited Stores, and Victoria’s Secret.
She began her career as a Buyer at Topshop Topman between 1996 and 2000, working on Topshop’s own-brand, Moto denim, and the up-and-coming designer Jersey and knitwear departments, and setting up the Bazaar boutique area in the Topshop flagship store, which she used to source and hand-select collections from Portobello and Spitalfields markets and to bring independent designers to the British high street for the first time. Read Leather out of grapes? Say what!?
Sam is a recognized voice in the emerging biomaterials and biodesign community and has spoken in conversation with design scientist and biofuturist Dr. Melissa Sterry as part of Bioratorium®’s BIOfutures series on Substack, recorded for World Futures Day 2026 alongside artist Kasia Molga and BIOcrafted founder Chris Bellamy. She has also been invited to speak at Edition Spéciale by LUXE PACK in Paris, the luxury packaging and circular economy event held at the Carrousel du Louvre.
Sam’s continued professional development reflects her commitment to the field. She completed Fashion Values: Nature at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London in 2021, and Inside the Circular Economy: Beyond the Basics with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2021.
Earlier, she completed the Fashion and Sustainability Program: Understanding Luxury Fashion in a Changing World at the London College of Fashion in 2018 and Fashion’s Future: The Sustainable Development Goals with Fashion Revolution in 2019. Sam earned her 2:1 Bachelor of Science Degree in European Business and Technology from Coventry University in 1996, with a year of study at the IUT of Aix-en-Provence between 1994 and 1995, and completed her secondary schooling at Priors Field School in Surrey between 1986 and 1992.
Sam is a native English speaker with full professional fluency in French and divides her working life between England and the south of France.
Visit her LinkedIn profile and the Planet of the Grapes homepage. Follow Planet of the Grapes on LinkedIn and Instagram.