How did you come up with the idea of making textiles out of Mycelium – fungi?

I have always been interested in researching new ways to produce and imagine sustainable textiles. During my Masters degree in textile design at Central Saint Martins UAL in 1991 I started to research how to reconcile ecological principles with the process of designing and making textiles. This has been my core interest throughout my whole career. In the early 2000s I began to investigate how biomimicry and biology principles could be a means to develop more sustainable fabrication processes. I then curated the exhibition ALIVE: New design frontiers in 2013 in Paris, after spending two years researching the emerging landscape of biodesign. During this time I was introduced to the work of Philipp Ross, an artist who was producing installations, furniture and bricks out of Mycelium. I became very curious about this process and decided to explore the potential of mycelium for sustainable textile embellishments.

What is the focus of all of your research?

Where is your perspective of alternative materials and processes regarding the textile industry?

I believe the future of design and manufacturing lies in biology. We need to radically rethink our production systems to become more ecological and reduce or remove any kind of chemical-based processes. Of course, we also need to change our consumption patterns. We also need to go beyond sustainability and start to develop a more regenerative design approach, where the focus is on repairing and restoring our environment and communities. We are producing more and more goods for an expanding world population, so the idea of “doing less bad“ is simply not good enough anymore. We can see growing evidence that climate change is happening faster than we had anticipated. We have to urgently think about how we design to repair and restore our ecosystems. And that can be enabled by bio-based research.

What is the most fascinating thing about working with Mycelium?

Mycelium is an incredible alchemist, it transforms its own food source into a new material. The fun thing about working with Mycelium is that it is a living organism. It is like a pet, you have to look after it, you have to feed it and create and control the environment of growth. But as it is a living system, it can bounce back, so it is kind of exciting and also frustrating at the same time, as you can not completely control it. For instance, I grew a sample where some kind of fractal patterns appeared on the surface, I did not plan this at all, this is solely due to the growth behavior of the mycelium culture. To this day I have not managed to replicate this behavior.