THE JOURNAL
Mylo lab specimans. Photograph courtesy of Bolt Threads
The future of fashion is being cooked up in a lab. Not a designer’s studio or an art school think-shower, but a laboratory where biochemists are engineering a new generation of fabrics at a fraction of the ecological cost of today’s threads.
Imagine a shirt made from synthetic spider silk or sneakers made of mushroom leather. Picture a warm winter sweater, its fibres brewed from a bacterial soup, rather than harvested in a cotton field.
This process has a name: biofabrication. The basic idea is that garments are grown, rather than sewn, cultivated in huge vats under precise conditions. It’s experimental, freaky science that is still being refined, but there’s a certain urgency about it.
The climate crisis is forcing fashion to re-examine the way it does things and a growing number of consumers want to wear their eco credentials, quite literally, on their sleeves. Biotech companies, with the backing of major labels, are answering the call and proposing radical ideas for how we make the clothes of the near future.
If it grows in nature, it could be coming to a runway near you. We’re talking fibres produced from bacteria, algae, fungi, mould…
I’ll stop you there. Mould? We’re going to be wearing mould?
Well, cool mould. Eco-mould. Mouldy couture. It’s a lot to get your head around, but it’ll grow on you once you see the products.
I don’t want anything growing on me, thank you very much.
Sorry, poor choice of words. These are clothes we’re talking about.
Not some parasitic spore that grows up my inside leg?
No, actual clothes. Coats, shirts, footwear. Earlier this year, New York label Public School collaborated with materials scientist Dr Theanne Schiros on a pair of sneakers predominantly made from a culture of bacteria and yeast. The material looks and feels like leather, but has a carbon footprint 97 per cent lower than other alternative materials, such as polyurethane leather.
And they look good?
Definitely. The same goes for the Moon Parka, a collaboration between The North Face and Japanese textile innovator Spiber. First showcased in 2019, it’s made of Brewed Protein, which is described as a kind of synthetic spider silk.
Representation of a cross-section of earth with mycelial growth. Photograph courtesy of Bolt Threads
That’s more like it. If we’re talking clothes from the future, I want to scale a building in them.
It won’t do that, but the jacket is as tough as carbon fibre. Plus, it’s waterproof and warm enough to wear in the Arctic. Spiber has also produced T-shirts with Sacai and sweaters with Goldwin, all made of the same material.
Do people actually want this stuff?
They will when it looks like regular swag. In April, adidas unveiled a pair of Stan Smiths made from a mushroom leather called Mylo. It has also invested in Bolt Threads, a Californian start-up that produces the material, and so have Stella McCartney, lululemon and Kering, the owner of brands such as Gucci, SAINT LAURENT, Balenciaga...
I should have known Balenciaga was in on this.
I can see you in a lab-grown leather blazer.
Hmm. Remind me why this is necessary?
Because fashion is largely unsustainable. If it’s not thirsty cotton draining fresh-water lakes to make slogan T-shirts, it’s the mountains of landfill or microplastics clogging up the oceans. Fashion’s environmental footprint is too big to ignore. Change is inevitable and, if we’re going to science our way out of the apocalypse, we might as well look good while we’re at it.
But if we’re still buying the same amount of stuff, landfills will still be overflowing.
Not with biofabrics they won’t. Those Public School sneakers will degrade to almost nothing within a few weeks in the soil because, like most biofabrics, they’re compostable. There’s also less waste material because biofabrics can be grown to specific needs. Throw in the savings in energy, water and land use and it’s a no-brainer.
OK, what else have you got?
Do you like algae?
Theanne Schiros X Public School NYC, Bio-Leather Chuck Taylor, 2021. Photograph by Mr Jon Brown
Can’t say I’ve tried it.
Mr Kanye West has. Last year, he debuted the Yeezy Foam Runner, which was partly made of the stuff. The benefit of algae is that it grows fast, uses relatively little water or energy and doesn’t need fertilisers. Labels have stretched into T-shirts and other garments and it’s also being used to create environmentally friendly dyes.
Any greenwashing to be aware of?
Like everything else, biofabrics do come with a carbon cost, but it is dramatically lower than traditional materials. As with anything labelled “sustainable”, it’s important to read the small print. West’s algae sneakers are only 20 per cent algae, for example, but it’s early days for the technology. If it matures as expected, we could even be wearing “living” clothes before long.
But you said nothing would be growing on me.
Not growing, exactly, but photosynthesising. Algae-based clothing that soaks up CO2 from the air and turns it into oxygen as you go about your day and works to make the planet healthier in the process.
So fashion really could save the world?
Exactly.