Fashion Design

Fabulous Fungi

Ilse Kremer
Practice Commercial Practices
Project New Frontiers
Major Fashion Design
Year Graduation Project

Nominee Global Design Graduate Show 2020

‘Fabulous Fungi’ focuses on one of the major problems in the current fashion industry: water pollution. Fungi are a promising source to reduce the use of harmful textile dyes.

There are different fungal species that create pigments which can be used for textile dyeing. After identifying methods on growing fungi and extracting the pigments, Ilse created fungal dye in cooperation with Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute. As fungal pigments react differently on various kinds of fabrics, Ilse utilised these effects to create prints. As an inspiration for these prints, she observed the chemical structures of the fungal pigments used for the dye.