This shoe is made entirely from mushroom ‘brains’
The fashion industry is environmentally cheesy, to put it mildly. Textile manufacturers consume around 200 million liters of water each year, while animal leather itself generates immense environmental burdens. But among everything we wear every day, shoes are among the most unsustainable accessories. Nearly 95% of all shoes end up in landfills, where all that rubber, plastic, and foam take generations to decompose.
Although there is no easy recipe for making a greener shoe, researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium hope to find a solution using mushrooms. In collaboration with De Munt Opera head shoemaker Marie De Ryck, the team unveiled a new experience ahead of Milan Design Week: the world’s first boot made entirely from mycelium.
Fungi are most recognizable on the surface as spongy fungi, but they represent only a fraction of the larger story of these organisms. Below ground, mushrooms are frequently connected by miles of fibrous webs of mycelium. These networks carry vital environmental information between fungi about precipitation, soil health, access to sunlight, and more. The communications are so detailed that many mycologists consider these networks to be a form of intelligence.
Mushrooms and their mycelial networks are now being used in exciting fields, including organic computing and even mushroom-powered toilets. But according to VUB microbiologists, these fungal roots can also be modified to form all the necessary components for a shoe. This goes beyond previous experiments that used fungi only as surface materials or as leather substitutes.
There’s a reason why such a project hasn’t come to fruition in the past: mycelium simply isn’t easy to use. It took over two years of trial and error to find a balance between natural growth and resilience. Ultimately, the biggest problem was finding a way to transform mycelia grown as flat sheets into a supportive, three-dimensional shoe sole. Ultimately, the designers settled on two types of mushrooms: one to provide the malleable, foam-like sole and another for the leathery upper part of the shoe.
“It is a conceptual object intended to frame what is currently possible with the material,” VUB designer Lars Dittrich explained in a statement. “It reflects…how we grow and shape this material, made from a microorganism, into a functional three-dimensional form.”
“Even though the first material samples were challenging and did not immediately meet the technical requirements of a complex shoe construction, the progress we have made is truly inspiring,” added De Ryck.
While the first prototype may not exactly be ready for a haute couture show, it’s certainly a promising step forward toward truly sustainable footwear.
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