Sartorial Mycelia

For Marina Zurkow's Renatured class, our design team (myself, Adam Quinn and Xuedi Chen) took fungus to a place it hasn't been before: the fashion world. 

We were directly inspired by artist Jae Rhim Lee's work. Lee is an artist working at the self-proclaimed intersection of art, science and culture. Her work examines the complex dichotomy of our current environmental age where "we are both responsible for and victims of our own pollution." 

Lee hopes to build a community around decompi(culture), where we make a conscious shift from the denial of death and preservation to a radical acceptance of death and decomposition. She speaks of how "our bodies are filters and store houses for environmental toxins." Her "Death Suit" uses mycoremediation (a form of bioremediation) in which fungi are used to decontaminate the toxins present in our own bodies.

Employing a variety of dried mushrooms, we built a mycelial dress. It's a commentary on our own decomposition, fragility and active need for filtration. 

From this, we crafted a satirical narrative around an oblivious fashion designer "ADAMO" who took partial ownership of this idea, intentionally misappropriated it and deliberately intended to profit off of it. We then photographed our dress in New York's fashionable Soho neighborhood and filmed a mockumentary about our clueless designer entitled: "Cracking the Adamo." It's Zoolander meets the Death Suit meets Alexander McQueen.

Our Inspiration, The Mushroom Death Suit:

Our Execution: