MycoTEX Jacket, 2018
Aniela Hoitink (b. 1975) and Karin Vlug (b. 1990)
Mushroom mycelium and substrate, 20 × 26 1/2 × 10 in. (50.8 × 67.3 × 25.4 cm)
Courtesy Aniela Hoitink | NEFFA

Aniela Hoitink and Karin Vlug envision a clothing supply chain that uses less water and energy than natural fiber production and avoids harmful synthetic byproducts. This jacket is made of mycelia—masses of rootlike fungal hyphae from which mushrooms, for example, emerge. The jacket is completely biodegradable and can be repaired using more sheets of mycelium. The continual remaking necessary to sustain a mycelium garment challenges conventional notions of conservation as repair. Can the MycoTEX jacket be conserved in perpetuity as a result? The history of clothing remains accessible today in part because items have survived to the present. How will garments designed to disappear be remembered?