Foraging for fashion’s future: The use of mycelium materials and fungi intelligence in fashion design

Abstract

In reaction to the climate crisis, we have seen the emergence of environmental fashion trends that seek to limit energy use and cut emissions, with the aim of building sustainability. The provocation to design in concert with our biosphere is driving fashion designers to renegotiate our relationship with living systems in the quest for innovative ecological design models. This article explores the transformative coupling of fungi fabric and fashion. It considers how fashion brands and designers might develop new languages by bringing fungi’s root intelligence into wearable forms. A body of remarkable experiments has shown that fungi engage in decision-making, are capable of learning and possess short-term memory. The intelligence of the fungal ecosystem and its ability to repair damage in its own structure brings new possibilities to the idea of a ‘smart’ textile. Preserving these active qualities in a textile raises challenges for fashion brands and consumers about how to store the garments and whether we would need to feed our wardrobe of the future to keep it alive. If use of mycelium in fashion is to progress beyond the Petri dish or catwalk novelty, challenges of consistency and scale need to be addressed. Far from the ‘perfect cure’, fungi materials raise questions about their eco-credentials, finishing treatments and disposability, and the ethics of working with living organisms. With a rising experimentation in bio-fabrics, I suggest the need for a critical discourse of materials that aims to promote new questions and scholarship on the intersections between body and botany, decomposition and drapery, and engineering and ecosystems.