Art Direction by Lia Leiva 
Co-Production and Original Sound by Downtime Studios
Performance by Martin Maluki

Fashion and nature seem mutually exclusive from each other, but they are just two concepts that lost their balance to coexist long ago. This is why they seem like enemies. The fashion industry, being one of the largest industries worldwide, is projected to grow in value from 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020 to about 2.25 trillion dollars by 2025, showing that the demand for clothing and shoes is on the rise across the world (Shahbandeh, 2021). Fashion has had an impact on earth over the last years and one is clearly giving more than the other one, as Rockström has shown us is his study and proof of the transgression of certain planetary boundaries (Rockström, 2009). Logically, we have reached a limit and we have been taking more from nature than what we are giving back. 

We are inevitably part of this systematic world that we as a society have created, where consumption is necessary to exist. We have grown up in a society that associates success with growth driving us to always want more. Natural resources and clothes are essential to survive in this game humans invented and we call life. Industries thrive on the need of consumers to look for ephemeral happiness in constant shopping. Which is clearly just an endless throwaway culture loop to keep the business growing. Overconsumption has led us to discard 92 million tons of clothes-related waste each year worldwide (Mulhern, 2021). Anthropogenic stress on earth has led us to turn our gaze away from what is really significant to our wellbeing, nature.

According to the UN 56.2% of the global population now lives in cities (Buchholz, 2020). A study made by The Yale School of The Environment says that people who spend at least two hours a week in nature, parks or any green space are more likely to be in good health and psychological well-being than those who don't (Robbins, 2020).

 

    Without realising, some of us, the more we want to connect to the cloud the more disconnected we are from the core.

 

Yet, what could be defined as the core? In this study the core will be characterised as mycorrhizal fungi, representing nature not only as a physical space but also as a system to live mentally by. The term waste does not exist in nature thanks to fungi. 

Deviation from nature is a deviation from happiness. 

Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784.

 

Mycorrhizal fungi are beneficial fungi growing in association with plant roots (www.rhs.org.uk, n.d.) and they will be used in this review as an inspiration metaphorically to how humans and nature should be growing in association with each other. Fungi are everywhere and as Merlin Sheldrake puts it in his book: they provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, the ways we think, feel and behave (Sheldrake, 2021). Fungi are the greatest decomposers of life. This concept is also used metaphorically in this manifesto to re-interpret ‘decomposition’ as the art of upcycling to not contribute to the overconsumption of new materials. 

 

Could a constant relationship with nature shift the modern consumer’s shopping habits, consequently leading them to a gratified existence and a less negative impact environmentally?

 

Personally I view the art of Fashion Design as Herbert A. Simon defines it: ‘to design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’. The aim is to create solutions through art. Despite fashion being one of the most harmful practises humans created in this system, we have been experiencing a community of brilliant minds that work tirelessly to change this reality for a better future and that future is now. This is why the final manifesto will use the art of storytelling as a medium to communicate the importance of our relationship with the core through an audiovisual production.

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