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Mycelium Jacket

Name: Mycelium Jacket
Brand: Vollebak
Price: 57495.00 GBP
Availability: OutOfStock

Built with programmed mycelium, this jacket might be conscious. So be nice to it.

CHF 57,495

Built from the softest mycelium
Based on the iconic A-2 flight jacket
Double-layer front pockets
Fully lined

Mycelium is a billion year old biotechnology. It powers entire ecosystems, recycles the dead, and NASA thinks we can probably use it to grow houses on Mars. Follow a mycelial network under a microscope and it looks very much alive. Which is why in speculative biology, architecture and computing, it’s being treated less as matter and more as a living system.

Researchers are now using mycelial networks as experimental computing media, tapping into their electrical activity to build rudimentary biocomputers, shroom-robots, neuromorphic components that mimic how brains process signals, and self-sensing materials. In these projects, mycelium is the biomaterial computers are built from, the sensor that reads the world, and part of the processor itself.

And once you start seeing fungi as a dense, living network, new possibilities emerge. What if this biology is something we can build with? Mycelium already runs underground logistics for entire ecosystems. And under controlled conditions, those same threads can be bio-engineered into dense, complex interlocking sheets. This is the start of materials that are programmed, not manufactured.

So we did a bit of programming to build the softest mycelium leather jacket ever made. There’s currently just one in the world as it’s a concept piece to show what will become possible in the next decade. Currently it’s ours, as we built it. However we are of course open to offers. But please note, we think the jacket may be conscious… so you’d have to be extra nice to it.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Raw, matt, mycelium material

Double-layer front pockets with zipped interior pocket and snap-closure outer pocket

Sleeve zip pocket

Covered two-way centre-front zip

Italian ribs and cuff

Raw, matt, mycelium material

Double-layer front pockets with zipped interior pocket and snap-closure outer pocket

Sleeve zip pocket

Covered two-way centre-front zip

Italian ribs and cuff

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What lies beneath

Follow a mycelial network under a microscope and it looks very much alive and almost conscious. It explores, avoids obstacles, and smartly chases resources. Electrical spikes ripple through its filaments and nutrients are routed, hoarded and released. Some researchers describe fungal networks as primitive information-processing systems, sensing, integrating and responding to the world in a distributed way.

A smart living network

Mycelium is now being mapped, modelled and engineered. In laboratories, it's grown into foams, panels and sheets. In speculative biology, architecture and computing, it's being treated less as matter and more as a living system. Researchers are already using mycelial networks as experimental computing media, tapping into their electrical activity to build rudimentary biocomputers, shroom-robots, neuromorphic components that mimic how brains process signals, and self-sensing materials. In these projects, mycelium is the biomaterial computers are built from, the sensor that reads the world, and part of the processor itself.

A biomaterial for the future

Grown in controlled conditions, mycelium can be formed into dense, interlocking mats that are lightweight, strong and tuneable. Change the nutrients, temperature or humidity and you change the material. Flexibility, density, surface structure, tear resistance and thermal behaviour can all be dialled in during growth rather than imposed afterwards. That's why mycelium is now being explored as everything from protein source to speculative life support for space colonies – acting as structure, insulation, radiation shield and a living base for waste recycling and food production.

The mycelium whisperer

If mycelium-as-material has a visionary champion and pioneering experimentalist, it's Phil Ross. Based in San Francisco, Ross didn't come to fungi through material science, but through art, philosophy and cooking. He began foraging and growing mushrooms in forests and kitchens, then started cultivating them in studios and improvised labs, learning how subtle changes in environment radically altered how fungal networks formed. Long before mycelium was a venture-backed growth opportunity, Ross was treating it as a collaborator, something you work with, not process.

Fungal architecture

In the 1990s, Phil Ross began growing mycelium into solid objects, bricks, blocks, furniture and architectural structures. Using sterilised agricultural waste as feedstock, he encouraged fungal networks to digest and bind the substrate into dense, lightweight composites. He called it ‘mycotecture’ – architecture that was grown rather than assembled. His fungal structures were exhibited internationally, including a mycelium tea house which he added, brick by brick, to boiling water and served as a healthy beverage. For Ross though, mycelium is not a novelty biomaterial but a generative technology, something to build and manufacture with.

From lab experiments to bio-manufacturing

Ross demonstrated that fungal growth could be directed. That density, structure and behaviour could be shaped. And that biology itself could become a design tool. While preparing one of these early projects, Ross met Sophia Wang and together they founded MycoWorks. Together they wanted to prove the potential of mycelium manufacturing and saw a commercial opening for an ethical substitute for leather.

Cultivation and control

To turn a grown mass into something wearable, it has to be arrested, stabilised and engineered. Sheets are peeled away, pressed, dried, and put through finishing processes adapted from leather making and tanning. More advanced systems now engineer the mycelium architecture during growth itself, manipulating gases and moisture so the fibres knit into tighter, stronger, more leather-like networks before finishing even begins.

Making the most of mycelium

Despite high profile appearances on runways, mycelium remains a difficult material to commercialise. Purpose-built fungal factories are expensive, and growth cycles are slow. Growing uniform, unblemished sheets at scale is a biological challenge. That’s why the mycelium clothes, shoes and bags you see today are heavily coated, laminated or produced in tiny runs. It’s also why so many feel stiff and over-processed. Our mission was simple, make the best jacket possible from the softest, most supple mycelium available, to show what can be done.

The softest mycelium ever made

Most mycelium textiles are optimised for structure so that they can be used in handbags, shoes, furniture and car interiors. What we wanted was the opposite – the most supple mycelium MycoWorks had ever produced. They showed us what they had and we asked them to make it even softer. We ended up with just six sheets of the finest mycelium ever grown. That finite supply is the reason this jacket exists as a genuine one-off concept piece. We only had one shot at it.

Bioengineering not vegan leather

Most alternative leathers are judged by how convincingly they impersonate something else. Grain is stamped in. Surfaces are corrected. And coatings are added. We took the opposite approach. The mycelium sheets we used weren’t corrected or polished to simulate an animal skin. They were left in a raw, matt state that preserves the natural surface of the grown material. You can see the fibre structure, subtle growth variation. We’ve even left on the unique panel numbers stamped into each piece of mycelium.

An instant icon

We wanted this jacket to be the ultimate showcase for mycelium, to use it in a reworking of an iconic design. That’s why this jacket is based on the A-2 flight jacket. Adopted in 1931 as standard issue for the U.S. Army Air Corps, the A-2 was engineered for open and semi-open aircraft, built with abrasion-resistant leather, knitted cuffs and waistband to seal out wind, a close fit to avoid snagging and patch pockets designed for maps and gloves rather than hands.

The most famous leather jacket ever made

During the Second World War air crews painted their A-2 jackets with squadron insignia, mission tallies and pin-ups, turning each one into a personal record of their service and what they were missing. War over, the A-2 became prized military surplus. Then Steve McQueen wore one in The Great Escape and made it arguably the most recognisable leather jacket ever made.

Redesigning the A-2 around mycelium

Although the silhouette clearly references the A-2, the Mycelium Jacket isn’t a simple reproduction. Our design adapts to the demands of working with sheets of mycelium rather than animal hide. The original A-2 was built with horsehide and goatskin but mycelium behaves differently. It prefers continuous curves to sharp folds, fewer perforations and lower seam density. So instead of copying a 1930s pattern, we re-engineered it.

Engineered for cultivated skin

We redrew the architecture of the jacket to create cleaner lines that let the material sit naturally rather than forcing it into hard breaks. We’ve added two large, side-entry double layered pockets, a zipped internal pocket and snap-fastening outer pocket, that sit flat and have moleskin pocket bags. There’s also a sleeve zip pocket and a covered two-way front zip while ribbed cuffs and hem echo the original A-2’s draft-sealing.

Welcome to fungi on Mars

Fungi may become even more useful when we leave the planet. Space agencies are studying fungi as a potential construction material on the Moon, Mars or beyond. Researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center are already prototyping ‘myco-architecture’, habitats grown from fungal mycelium rather than shipped from Earth. Launching tons of steel and concrete across space is expensive, while a lightweight scaffold seeded with dormant fungi can be unfolded and simply grown on arrival. Add water and nutrients and the structure fills itself in.

Mycelium space architecture

Mycelium’s credentials as living construction material for space settlements is obvious. It grows in the dark, in vertical stacked layers, and thrives on waste. With the right conditions it weaves itself into dense, insulating, surprisingly strong composites that can be dried for rigidity or kept alive for self-repair. It can even offer some protection from radiation. The same organism that quietly knits forests together could be coaxed into bricks, panels and structural shells on other planets.

Life support for Martian settlers

Mycelium could function as both life support and food supply for Martian settlers. Mushrooms turn inedible biomass into dense protein. They thrive on the by-products of other life-support systems, converting waste into CO₂ and nutrients for the next crop. Trials suggest some species can even work magic in Martian regolith, turning sterile dust into a workable growing medium, not soil exactly but life supporting. In a closed habitat, fungi become farm, recycler and food stuff all at once.

A box born of nature

Once the Mycelium Jacket was finished, we knew we needed something special for it to travel around in. We called Sebastian Aristotelis, co-founder and lead architect at SAGA Space Architects, the Copenhagen studio that designed our Spaceshop. Seb’s team are expert 3D printers, creating rapid prototypes for its European Space Agency projects. Seb also co-founded 3D building specialists, 3DCP Group, currently finishing Europe’s largest 3D-printed housing development. We didn’t need a house. We needed a box that looked like it had grown out of the ground.

Digital clay and organic design

As a creative starting point, we sent Seb a visualisation, inspired by cross-sections of soil and the tangled architecture of mycelium itself. His team studied the lamella – the gill-like structures under a mushroom cap – and used those as a structural starting point for the design. SAGA’s work is usually precise parametrics, but for this project, they used free-hand digital modelling, shaping forms on screen like digital clay.

30 parts, 1,100 hours of printing

The finished box is about the size of a small dining table and made up of 30 individual parts printed in polylactic acid, a biodegradable bioplastic derived from corn starch. Apart from its edges, each part has no straight lines, just dense, organic complexity and Seb says it was the most demanding 3D printing project his team had ever attempted. Completing it took four printers running full-time for four days, 1,100 hours of continuous printing.