Mushroom Fashion Celebrates NYFW Moment at Stella McCartney’s Soho Store – WWD
Surprise, surprise — Mushroom moments and conversations continue at Stella McCartney.
The designer isn’t in attendance, but she convened a group of mushroom innovators with biotech firm Bolt Thread at her store in Soho this week to discuss fungi’s brazen delights.
An in-store event on Tuesday celebrated the commercial release of the Frayme Mylo collection. It showcased glowing mushroom embellishments and prototypes such as a falabella bag, bustier, trousers, and a Frayme Mylo bag (his retail price was $3,500, which sold out online after the drop in June). This collection utilizes his Mylo material of bolt his threads made from the mycelium, or fungal root-like system, as a bio-based alternative to leather.
McCartney has been partnering with Bolt Threads since 2017 and has produced 100 commercial bags in Mylo material to date. This does not include clothing that debuted last year.
Julia Gall moderated a panel on mushroom innovation featuring Jamie Bainbridge, vice president of product development at Bolt Threads; Andrew Carter, co-founder of mushroom farm Smallhold; Tonya Papanikolov, founder of medicinal mushroom company Rainbo; and plant-based chef Various subject matter experts emerged, such as Tara Thomas.
“We don’t know how to grow most of the fungi out there…it feels like the next frontier of discovery is not only food but also ingredients,” Carter said. It feels like a good fit for the industry and another thing that always excites me is how excited people are about it [that] Wear a mushroom T-shirt and go to a mushroom fashion event like this one.
In fact, fashionable people gathered to learn about the innovator behind the world’s first luxury bags made with mycelium on the market.
“The most interesting thing about food is that you can flavor it, sweeten it, change its texture, especially in plant-based dishes. [mushroom is] It’s like the star of the show because it has a body,” said Thomas.
Alongside McCartney, fashion’s mushroom manipulators include Adidas, lululemon and Kering. On how fashion street stylers are taking it, Bolt Threads shares how influencers Griffin Maxwell Brooks, Maria Alia Al-sadek and Kailee McKenzie watched her sport her Frayme. showed. Milo’s bag seen on the streets of New York Fashion Week.