11. Implications and applications: 2100 post fast fashion silhouette: regenerative and biodegradable.¶
I-Storytelling¶
Text of the video and references.
How do you picture the future? A lot of people would say Greener. Fairer. Cleaner. Unfortunately, only by looking at pictures of what is happening now, this is very unlikely. The oil peak is predicted to happen somewhere between 2025 and 2035. Currently, the vast majority of industries are based on petroleum and petrochemistry, whether it is for textiles, energies or materials. According to the UN (https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html), we are expected to be more than 9,7 billion humans on this planet by 2050. By then, we can expect every parcel of cultivable land to be exploited for food growth, and every water drop carefully used. We are far from the utopian future we imagined in “la belle bleue” and closer to dystopian ones like Gotham, district 9 or avatar. In the next years, we can expect the textile industry to go through massive changings in order for new textiles to be developed by 2100. In a dystopian or in an utopian future, clothing solutions require regenerative design to fix the problems caused by the current textile industry since we all know limiting them won’t be enough. My project is about using biotechnologies to develop regenerative, 100% biodegradable, 100% biosourced and grown in labs textiles to save cultivable lands using unusable or toxic waste as raw materials. Music: Underground Lab by WinnieTheMoog Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8596-underground-lab License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseWhy? Because the resources are not durable and need to be changed, and because waste is our biggest resource. Who? Textile to make clothes worn by everyone. When? Developed now, mainstream by 2100.
II-2100 post-fast-fashion bio silhouette Mindmap.¶
I made this mindmap to explain the concept I want to developp in my final project, answering to the questions What? and How? questions of the 5W.
III-How will the projects be developped?¶
As you can see in the mindmap, I have three projects in mind to developp this post-fast-fashion biobased and biodegradable silhouette.
a-Mycelium composite threads and woven/knitted textile¶
Fungi are incredible species. Their evolving capacity is truly impressive and since nature is well built, they already found ways to degrade plastics, petrochemistry industry products and toxic compounds. During the past years, more than 50 species of fungi have been found to be able to digest plastic (1). In particular, Pestalotiopsis microspora and Aspergillus tubingensis can feed on polyurethane and polyurethane polyester. The bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis was also repoted to be able to digest PET (2). The project Fungi Mutarium already developed edible mycelium growing on agar and plastic, using more common fungi like Schizophyllum commune and Pleurotus ostreatus.
Textile waste can take up to 200 years to decompose (3), so growing new fibers out of previous fibers would represent a great revalorization of the fibers and acceleration of the process. Moreover, mycelium does not have to be pure to make new fibers and can be mixed with the waste fibers in the final product to make a composite thread. The aim of the project is to use only waste products so the goal is to develop a recipe using rich foodwaste (see Week 9: textile as scaffold) and textile or plastic waste.
It is now widely known that mycelium can be used to make leather since it forms some kind of fibers that can be flattened and form some kind of non-woven textile. But how about threads? So far I have not spotted any company that managed to make mycelium threads, but from the structure it forms when growing, it seems possible to transform it into threads. The Looop system from H&M was developed to recycle fibers from shredded fabrics, meaning a machine c an be made to turn small fibers into yarn.
Using species like mycelium also opens up possibilities to symbiosys with other species as cyanobacteria used in post-carbon lab.
| Step | Experimental plan |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bibliographic research for more information on growth conditions. Contacting researchers. |
| 2 | Experiments of growing myceliums on cellulose, cellulose based textile, synthetic textiles, food wastes and making aerial growth. |
| 3 | Turning the aerial fluffy mushroom into threads with a heling machine/finding a way to make threads out of the mycelium and its substrate using a solvent. Making experiments of growing mcelium on unshredded waste textile soaked in nutritious solution, replacing sewing by mycelium growth. |
| 4 | Determining the mechanical and chemical proprieties of the new treads (mechanical resistance, fire resistance, water resistance, flexibility…) at Eurecat. |
| 5 | Knitting or weaving the fiber depending on the proprieties. |
| 6 | Making a garment. |
b-Ocean shoes¶
Since the project is about making an entire silhouette, I though about making shoes and accessories out of invasive species that could be found anywhere in 2100. That is why I would like to develop vacuum molded shoes using jellyfish leather (from the jellyfish carcasses that will be invading coasts and beaches by then) and shoe soles made out of hand-extracted alginate bioplastics (casted in a CNC milled mold or in 3D printed). We already know about the alginate bio-plastics making process since we studied it at school but I would like to try if it is possible to use a less treated product (the algae itself) as the raw material. For the jellyfish leather, I know it is something that has already been done and only need to optimize the process to my own project.
| Step | Experimental plan |
|---|---|
| 1 | Finding dead jellyfishes and making leather out of it following the fish leather making process. Find the good coatings and treatments for making the right texture. |
| 2 | Designing the shoe sole and the top of the shoe on Rhinoceros 3D. CNC milling the mold(s). |
| 3 | Make alginate bioplastics out of algae I harvested myself and cast/3D print a shoe sole. |
| 4 | Assemble the parts. |
c-Growing cells in mesh shape to make a textile¶
This concept is more science-fiction-like and I am not sure I will have the time nor the means to develop it. But since I am a dreamer and it’s better to be overbooked than bored, I will develop it here. The concept dwells on the principle that some particular cells can form syncytium (aka fuse together) when infected by viruses or triggered by certain biological signalizations. For instance, placenta is a syncytium, but so are the pulmonar cells infected by VSR virus. I am not sure of the outcome of this, but fusing cells in a certain shape might enable the formation of new structures and geometries.
Just as Alexander McQueen made (tattooable!) human leather out of cell culture, Andrew Pelling developed human ears grown from apples or wants to grow neurons in asparagus scaffolds, this biohacking technique would allow to print whatever geometry by 3D printing the cells and fix the structure together by spreading the virus on it and making the cells fuse. For instance, printing a textile mesh to make tulle-like structures.
