Mycelial Clothing with Aniela Hoitink
Alisa Nappa
Today we sit down with Aniela Hoitink to talk about how to make clothing out of mycelium. The possibilities of mycomaterials are endless and Aniela and her team discovered an innovative technique to make mycoclothing custom fitted to each individual to revolutionize the clothing industry.
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TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker 0:00 Alex, Unknown Speaker 0:12 welcome, welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, and we are absolutely obsessed with the wonderful, wacky, mysterious world of mushrooms and fungi. We bring on guests and experts from all around the globe to geek out with us and go down this mysterious rabbit hole to try to figure out what the heck is going on with these mysterious fungal beings. So today, we have enyala Joining us from the Netherlands to talk about mycotoxins and Unknown Speaker 0:43 dresses made out of mycelium and so so many more mycomaterial niches that that she's a part of. So how you doing today? I'm good. Thank you. Good. Good. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. For people who don't know you and your work. What are you up to? Unknown Speaker 1:02 Yes. So my name is Angela royth. I'm the founder and CEO of mycotoxins, and what we do is we create a new supply chain for the fashion and textile industry that's based on mycelium and 3d production. Unknown Speaker 1:15 Great. And how did you originally get into this line of work? Unknown Speaker 1:20 I am a fashion designer by training and Unknown Speaker 1:25 Yeah, after working for several years for fashion companies, I decided I wanted to do something that was more innovative. So after a round of search where I was working with solar panels led lightnings, I went from technology into biotechnology and met a professor from the Utah University was was working with mycelium, and they had what is called, it's kind of an open call, where you could apply for with your idea, and if they liked it, you could start exploring that. And they were actually looking for people that did not know anything about mushrooms. And for me, this was fascinating, because I saw ideas that you could put in textiles without the need of hazardous chemicals, but really from nature. So I applied for it, and that's how, yeah, was one of the lucky few, and that's how I got started. So tell us more about mycotoxins and what what do you do? How are you different? What was your origin story? What are you up to at mycotoxins? Yeah, yeah. So originally we started, or as I started, working with petri dishes, it's a kind of submerged or semi submerged growing method. Unknown Speaker 2:37 And I grew a dress out of it. I have here a jacket. This is completely made in 3d Unknown Speaker 2:46 from all kinds of petri dish grown pieces. And I learned that by an accident, actually, that they stick together by nature. And that's then when I thought, Oh, if that's happening, how does that then work in the 3d space? Because this was initially in the flat space. Could I do it on a face mask? Could I then do it on a body? And this is actually how I created the concept of using mycelium as a base material for products that directly were made in 3d and the reason why I wanted to do that is that, because I'm a fashion designer, my fascination was on creating mass produced garments, but then customized and so by working with these moles, I figured eventually that it would allow me to make it really on a fit onto a body. So imagine Kim Kardashian walking around in a dress from mycelium, but then completely fit into her body. And rather than what she's now doing, she's wearing a lot of spandex to make it perfectly fit. So for me, yeah, working with mycelium really turned into kind of, you know, could I solve what was my own Holy Grail? And yeah, along the way, Unknown Speaker 4:02 when talking to brands to see, you know, what they thought of this concept, Unknown Speaker 4:07 that's also where we learned that, you know, the whole Petri disk growing method was actually not so, so commercial and so I but, but we learned that people like the concept of having mycelium textiles. So that's when we moved to growing through liquid culture. Unknown Speaker 4:24 Cool, yeah, I saw a picture of the dress, and it looked like a bunch of circles kind of connected together, which makes sense now that you're saying it's from petri dishes, Unknown Speaker 4:36 and how, how would you combine those petri dish circles and mycelium together back in the day. Unknown Speaker 4:44 Yes, actually. So it's the you grow the mycelium by adding some medium in the petri dish, and you let it grow for several days, and then after some more days, you have to inject some more Unknown Speaker 4:58 medium underneath the. Unknown Speaker 5:00 The disk. And this you all have to do in a sterile environment, which is, you know, for me, not coming from Unknown Speaker 5:08 microbiology, I did not have any course. So this was a great learning curve, because in the dress, there's around 1000 petri dishes. So every single piece made really hand by hand. So imagine the amount of work is that is going into making one single dress. And if you want to, you know, promote that, yeah, it's nice for couture, but it's not really nice if you want to really bring it onto the market. So that's also when I started looking into different ways of growing mycelium. But the whole principle is actually very simple where and in everything that we do, we try to keep to learn from the mycelium. So in this case, it started out as I wanted to make pleats in the mycelium. So I pleated them whilst wet on sticks of wood and let them dry. But then I learned that, you know, it was sticking to the wood. So that was how I got the idea. Okay, it's sticking. That's not what I want. But what happens if I use the sticking? And this is how I started stacking the petri dishes, and that's how you actually got the dress. So for me, like one of the interesting parts is really to look at, what is the mycelium doing, and how can I use that in in its good way, basically. So moving forward, you said, obviously 1000 petri dishes per dresses, a lot of work and not very sustainable or scalable. So liquid culture is what you said. You're moving forward with, and moving towards using the person as the mold, rather than growing this dress separately and then selling it to any person. So it doesn't really fit as well, but really customizing it per person. So how do you go about that process? Do you make a scan of someone? Do you have them come in person and grow it on them. Do you take measurements, just like a tailor would with a tape measure or something like that, and get the dimensions? Like, how do you go about custom growing clothing for a specific person? Unknown Speaker 7:15 Yeah, so it will depend. Like, right now, this is still very early stage. So we would then scan the body of this person, so they would have to come in. But with the scanner, you can scan a person's body, and then we work that into a mold. But what we see happening more and more is that you know, in part, as part of, for example, your training, Unknown Speaker 7:39 your trade, your exercising, you would get a bad body scan in this gym, for example. So we believe that at a certain point, everyone will have their body scan, and then you can just upload it online and have, you know, have your data there, and then, based on that data, we could then alter the moles that we have here. Yeah, I think that would be really beneficial for just clothing in general, and also just, you know, health and, Unknown Speaker 8:10 you know, physical tests and things like that. Unknown Speaker 8:13 Yeah, there's clothing fits differently, brand to brand and and to have your your scan and just to be able to upload it, and to have, Unknown Speaker 8:24 not only like custom clothes fit to you, but also, you know, if you're on other websites or whatever, and like, well, our, our size eight fits better for you, and then another brand, oh, our size 10 fits better for you. Or that would be really, really beneficial. So when you're doing liquid culture, are you, how does the growing process look like? Do you have kind of a mannequin that you Unknown Speaker 8:51 kind of, like, harvest the pure mycelium out of the liquid culture, then kind of Unknown Speaker 8:57 lather it on and then it grows around this mold? Or, like, how does the growing process look like? Yeah, the growing process is happening during the liquid culturing. So, you know, basically we start with the petri dish, and then you make a liquid culture from it at a small scale. So you start basically with a couple of erlenmeyers, and then you grow it every time you go into a bigger bioreactor. So this is the principle of scaling. What we then do is we harvest this biomass, so we separate the medium from the biomass. We add in what we call our secret sauce, so the ingredients to make it into a textile. Unknown Speaker 9:37 And then we can also add pigments, so if you would like to have it died, this is the moment where we would add it, Unknown Speaker 9:45 and then we have developed our own application method. So you know, when I when I have a mold, I we will then place the biomass around the mold, and during the drying process, the material bonds together, and we'll make a copy of. Unknown Speaker 10:00 That mold. So the shape, the texture that you have in the mold, it will all be a copy eventually. So I think it's more about the drying process that is making it into a textile, depending, of course, on the ingredients that you're adding into the mycelium. So what are some of the pros and cons of working with mycelium biomaterials compared to Unknown Speaker 10:26 other biomaterials, and then compared to, you know, traditional materials like cotton or linen or anything else on on the market. Unknown Speaker 10:39 Yeah, pros and cons. I mean, I have worked with LGR in the past and with kombucha, but not as extensively as with mycelium. So I would not be able to go in depth in that the reason why I started working with mycelium, or I should say, I continued working with mycelium, is that I saw there at this moment, more opportunities to shape it in 3d Unknown Speaker 11:03 but if you compare it to the conventional industry, and I know, you know, there's a lot of companies out there making leather from mycelium, Unknown Speaker 11:12 but yeah, what we're trying to do is actually create a new textile out of mycelium. And the reason why we want to do that is that if you recreate leather, you typically have to have a leather tanning procedure. So as I said before, I'd like to look at the mycelium and use it how it is working, rather than pressing it into the leather look, because then it will involve leather tanning, which, in my opinion, yeah, eventually it might be sustainable, but right now, it's still a hazardous chemical process, and so for us, you know, it's more about working with the material, Unknown Speaker 11:52 what it gives us from Mother Nature, rather than us pushing it into a material. So, but if you would compare it with leather, for example, yeah, you have to kill a cow to Unknown Speaker 12:02 start with, but also the shape of the cow is quite differently. There might be good parts, but there might be also bad parts. So you have to cut the pattern pieces around that. You have to cut pattern pieces. So what we do with the 3d application method is that we are actually eliminating a lot of the waste. So if you, for example, would make a jacket out of the leather, 10 to 30% or Yeah, minimum is, is, yeah, production waste. And when we are producing it in 3d Unknown Speaker 12:38 Yeah, we're almost eliminating all that waste, because we don't have to cut any pieces together. Another benefit which is often overlooked is that, and this is more you know, from the textile point of view, if you remove the seams, you're removing the weakest part of a pro of the product. So the seams are typically the weakest part in a product. So yeah, when you're making a product in 3d and it's completely seamless, then, of course, you don't have that issue anymore. So I mean, yeah, there's I can, you know, if you give me another half hour, I can give you more benefits. But I would say this is like a nice summary, yeah, you bring up a good point of not having seams and not increasing the durability. I am curious about the overall durability. I did watch a TED talk with kombucha leather, and I can't remember who the speaker was. This was years ago, but I remember at the end of the talk, she was like, I gotta run off stage because all the lights shining on me, and it's making me sweat a lot, and this, this kombucha dress, is like falling apart, and I need to, like, run backstage. Unknown Speaker 13:49 Is that a problem with that you foresee with these, the these clothings, and I know you were talking about trying to stay away from using heavy chemicals, like in the tanning process, I know for most mycomaterials, the producers want to kill the mycelium, to make it inactive so it stops growing. It doesn't produce mushrooms. Unknown Speaker 14:15 But also treat it with Unknown Speaker 14:18 something on the outside too, so it doesn't Unknown Speaker 14:24 basically dissolve on your body via sweat or if you get caught in the rain or, you know, things like that. So yeah, what is your thoughts around Unknown Speaker 14:34 water production with with these clothing? Well, the lady that you're referring to is Suzanne Lee, and she's one of the, you know, on the forefront of next generation materials. Unknown Speaker 14:46 Well, at the end, you know, when we are delivering a product, we have to follow all the kind of specs that we get from from companies, whether it's in the interior industry, whether it's in fashion. So every every company has specific. Unknown Speaker 15:00 That you have to address. So to give you some it could be the tensile strength, the tear resistance, the abbreviation, the flexibility. So whenever we produce something, we have to adhere to that, that it has a minimum amount, meaning that once you meet all those specs your garment is, is really good wearable. I would say our products would already be wearable right now, Unknown Speaker 15:25 but yeah, when you meet those specs, then you have kind of the guarantee, because those specs are there for a reason. Typically, it will depend on the types of products that you're making, if you would need a coating or not. So we have, at the moment, two different materials, one which is what we call a little bit leather like, because people do like to see leather in it. But we have an alternative that looks a little bit more paper like, which we develop a little more towards the industry of interior, Unknown Speaker 15:56 because they like to have, not always to have this leather look. And for that one, the hand feel so nice that you don't want to coat it. So because also the coating will change the hand feel. So yeah, it will eventually depend on what kind of products, what kind of look, what kind of handful, and handful is very subjective. So yeah, there's a lot of things that eventually to create a product and bring it onto the market that you have to take into account. Unknown Speaker 16:25 And Unknown Speaker 16:28 I'm guessing this is not very breathable, is it? Is it pretty hot to wear? Unknown Speaker 16:35 I mean, so is the leather jacket. So it's not a bad thing. It's just, I'm just curious on what the material feels like to wear. Unknown Speaker 16:43 Yeah, so it Unknown Speaker 16:46 will depend on the material. So this is the more paper like material, and it feels also more paper like. So that's also, you know, we had it tested by several people, and they all could say what they thought it was feeling like. So this is a more paper like feeling, and the other material has a more leather like feeling. They are both not really breathable, but there's a it depends on the kind of product that you're looking for. There's ways around it. I mean, nowadays, a lot of the things are made from plastic, and there's solutions for that as well. And as you mentioned, leather is not breathable. So basically, leather is a natural product. But, yeah, there's so much other things going eventually inside the leather and and it's always coated that one can wonder how much is actually natural in the final product. Unknown Speaker 17:36 What would you say has been the hardest part of your work? Unknown Speaker 17:41 I Unknown Speaker 17:43 I don't know if the hardest part is already has been done. Unknown Speaker 17:49 Maybe the hardest part is actually the scaling, but no one of the things so that one of the things is like it. For me, it was really easy how consumers kind of liked it and imagined themselves wearing it. But the hard part is more convincing an industry that wants to go sustainable, Unknown Speaker 18:13 but that needs to think about, you know, how you make a product in 3d because actually what we always call ourselves the high, high speed railway, because we're building something new next to the conventional supply chain. And the conventional supply chain is what everyone understands. It has several steps. You have to spin a yarn, weave a textile, dye it, cut it, and sew it. It's always done in many different countries. So it is actually very complex and very cloudy, and we are offering a supply chain based on two steps, which is, you know, we grow the material, we apply it on a mold, and your product is ready. It's all done first in Europe. So it's very open and transparent. But to convince people of our easier supply chain is actually the hardest part, because they have all kinds of ideas what they want to see in the garment, which we can do, but not in the way that they are used to. So once I had someone that said, Can we post process the garment? And I was like, Oh, what is the look that you want to achieve? And then she said, Well, I would like to have some pleats in the elbow, and then we would design those bleeds already in the whole design, so you would not have to do that. So we're skipping several steps. Also, the dyeing can be done, you know, directly in the biomass, which is saving a lot of water, but it is so simple that it's sometimes so complicated to understand. If you're in the fashion industry, I would say that that is maybe, for us, the most complex part. Unknown Speaker 19:45 So I have a lot of friends that either make their own clothes or, you know, will customize certain aspects of it and maybe add a zipper or things like that. Unknown Speaker 19:59 I. Unknown Speaker 20:00 I haven't done any of that, but I at Telluride mushroom festival, I think last year, the year before, I joined a mushroom dyeing workshop, and I dyed kind of like a handkerchief with some mushrooms. And that's like the closest thing I've done to making my own clothing. But every time I wear it, I'm like, There's a sense of Unknown Speaker 20:22 pride and achievement and like, there's a connection to that piece of fabric. Unknown Speaker 20:28 Similarly to, like, growing my own food or forging my own food, like, when I eat it, I'm like, I made that, or I forged that, or like, I have a connection to that. For someone who makes their own clothes, like, do you, do you have that same feeling when you're wearing your micro textiles or clothes that you make? Like, do you have that sentimental feeling as well of like, that piece of clothing is, like, 100 times more special than something I just got from the store? Unknown Speaker 21:01 Yeah, I think we have that, but not necessarily for the people making it, because we would be making it in the factory. Everything is just, just for yourself, yeah, oh, you mean for me, yeah, yeah, no, because I can imagine that eventually, when you buy our garments, that you would Unknown Speaker 21:21 yourself, yeah, yeah, no, customers or Yeah, no, I'm super proud of every I mean, you know, now we have a small team, so I'm not often, like, involved with my hands anymore, which I do miss. So I'm happy whenever i i can do something, but I still am every, you know, every day, I'm proud of all the achievements that you know, whether it's, you know, we have tested a new dye, and I see the sample in a new dye, or it's in a new shape and or I see, you know, we have some 3d designers creating, like we're creating guiding lines of how you could actually design, you know, with our material, What kind of textures could you design? So and this is super nice to see, like, Oh, what, what can we do? And to be honest, I don't think we have reached what the full potential of what we can do. I think that will take us some more years. Unknown Speaker 22:13 Because also, now that you know, we have launched, we just launched a new website, and there's some products on it. There's a cool video on it of how we envision the future. And we get people come to us, like, could you do this? And I was like, I've never thought about that. So it's actually, it's becoming more and more interesting as we go, because then other people start to think and imagine, okay, production with mushroom mycelium. What could that mean to me? And yeah, that's super excited also to see. Unknown Speaker 22:45 And Unknown Speaker 22:46 you know, as founders and CEOs of companies and people who own their own business, and I interview people like this all the time, and I have this personal experience is Unknown Speaker 22:58 most people go into this work of starting your own business with a lot of love, and Unknown Speaker 23:05 you find something like for me, like functional mushrooms. I love them. I love making tinctures and things like that. So I made my own, my own company. But this phenomenon happens all the time with founders. Is Unknown Speaker 23:20 then when they make their own, their own business, and they're a boss, then they don't do the thing in which they originally went into that business to do, right? And you were just saying, like, Oh, I'm barely hands on anymore, and that happens to so many founders of so I'm just curious if you could remove all aspects of your job that don't really like, or, you know, you have to do to keep the wheels turning, but, but you don't really enjoy, and you can only focus on, like, the most rewarding aspect, the thing that brings you the most joy. What? What would that be? Unknown Speaker 23:58 Um, Unknown Speaker 24:00 I mean, based on what you just said, I feel that I should say, you know, going back to the lab. But in fact, for me, the most rewarding. And, I mean, I'm a fashion designer by by training, and I remember the first time that I saw my design on the street. I Yeah, that's the best feeling. So I still would say, you know, seeing one of my designs on the street or in someone's interior, I think that would be the most, yeah, the most happiest feeling, because then it means that you know what your what we have done, or what I did, but that someone else likes it and spend money on it. And I think that's the most rewarding that you can can get. Unknown Speaker 24:43 Yeah, that would be a great, great feeling, yeah. And if you had unlimited time, money, team, equipment, Unknown Speaker 24:53 what would you do? And why? Unknown Speaker 24:59 Oh, I would. Unknown Speaker 25:00 Like to have more mushroom materials. I would like to have more, I mean, LGR materials, kombucha materials, so I would like to explore way much more materials at the same time. I would, know, make my laboratories bigger, Unknown Speaker 25:15 yeah, Unknown Speaker 25:17 lots of I mean, I love my job, so Unknown Speaker 25:20 lots of you know what we're doing, but then it would be much quicker, and we could make more people happy with these things. And if money this did not play a role, I would also, you know, just make products for people that I yeah, that supported us, Unknown Speaker 25:38 and that now are waiting for someone, for something, you know, before it hits the market. But then, if money didn't care, I would already make stuff right now, because, you know, the money doesn't care. So yeah, there's a bunch of things that I would would love to do then. So I know Unknown Speaker 25:55 most micro material people that I talk to, they use Reishi. It seems like a good Unknown Speaker 26:03 mushroom species to use. It seems like the tensile strength is really strong. It's semi fast growing, super antimicrobial and XYZ. The feeling is nice. It's kind of like a leathery mycelium. Unknown Speaker 26:17 But there's tons and tons of species out there, and I'm sure some fare better for a mycomaterial than others, and you were talking about before, you know, kind of trying to make something unique and going beyond mushroom leather. Have you explored using other species of fungi to try to find other kind of touch feels or tensile strengths or things that work better for mycotoxins. Unknown Speaker 26:49 Yes, I mean, when we decided that we should not proceed with petri dishes and we started looking into liquid culturing, then we tested several species, because not all species are working for liquid culturing. Unknown Speaker 27:04 And I found it pretty amazing that, yeah, I mean, as you said, you know, there's, I think, 1.3 million of species. Of course, you know, you don't want to work with species that are danger for human people, or that they're danger to the environment, but it was really interesting to see how different mycelium or different mushrooms react in liquid culturing. So the most amazing one that I saw was that it, it gave me kind of a plastic bubble with then mycelium inside. So when you press the the and it was really, it felt like black plastic. So it is. I mean, it's was not working for us, but it was super interesting to see how these different species eventually, how they grow, and at the end, indeed, you look something for something that is fast growing, that stays stable during growth, so that you can easily repeat Unknown Speaker 28:01 and you don't have to start from fresh stock every time. So yeah, there's many reasons why you would pick a certain type of mushroom Unknown Speaker 28:10 cool. And for people who want to learn more about Unknown Speaker 28:15 micro materials, I know it's a semi new field. It's expanding pretty rapidly all over the globe. People really excited about this new field of using mycelium as textiles and materials and sculptures. And seems like that we're just kind of touching the tip of the iceberg with the potential of mycomaterials as a whole. But then, you know, in general, like more biomaterials or Unknown Speaker 28:44 fashion design clothing making, where can people learn more about about this Unknown Speaker 28:51 line of work? Unknown Speaker 28:52 Well, I mean, you can always look at our website, which is mycotoxins.nl, Unknown Speaker 28:57 there are also several platforms out there where you can learn how you grow. So I know there's a lot of solid state growth, of which you then can grow a sheet of material on on top of that. So yeah, I think there's quite a lot here in the Netherlands. You have militarisk, you have the VAR where you could maybe do a course, so I would not know it globally. Of course, I know, you know where, where it could be in the Netherlands, but there's, I think, quite a lot that you can find as well. But you know the vac and mediamatic, I will repeat it so that people can listen it up in in the Netherlands, they can help you with that as well and give you courses and apart from your website, do you, do you post on social media, or do you have a place where people can reach out if they want to contact you? Do you have any other your website is, is the best? Well, we have social media, so we. Unknown Speaker 30:00 Post regularly on Instagram. I myself am on LinkedIn, so you can approach me there. And we have videos on our YouTube channel, which is from NEFA, the mother company. So there you can also find some all the images. I think even I have some growing things there, but I must say that it has been a while that I've checked it. Unknown Speaker 30:24 Yeah, same, Unknown Speaker 30:26 yeah, we asked to post on YouTube all the time, and then, yeah, it's been, it's been years. So sorry for anyone who used to follow us on YouTube. And I actually just met someone who was like, I watched your videos like five years ago, and I'm like, sorry a while, but that's how it goes. You know, there's so many new social medias popping up, left and right, and platforms change quite, quite quickly. Yeah, you can't, can't do everything Unknown Speaker 30:53 well. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited to see micro materials boom even more, and become kind of household products that everyone can can use, and you can just go to the store, and it's more Unknown Speaker 31:09 available for people. I think it's a really cool material, and you can do so many things with it. So excited to see your growth with mycotoxins and yeah, good luck with everything. Really appreciate it. Thank you, and thank you for everyone for tuning in and trimming in for another episode of the mushroom revival podcast. If you like the show, if you learned something cool on this episode or another episode, please tell everyone about, uh, mushrooms and mycelium and fungi and how cool they are. Keep the mycelium going, and really, we're all in this together. So spread the word about how amazing these organisms are. And if you want to support the show, we don't have a way, a direct way, that you can support monetarily, but we do have a mother brand, mushroom revival. We have a whole line of organic, functional mushroom products, from powders to gum to capsules and tinctures. And if you Unknown Speaker 32:13 are interested, we have a coupon code just for listeners at the podcast. It's pod treat for a surprise discount code if you don't want to spend any money, we have a giveaway going on where we pick a winner once a month and send him a box of mushroom goodies. And we also have a ton of free resources on our website, from blog posts to free ebooks that you can download. Unknown Speaker 32:36 And also my newest book, The Little Book of mushrooms, is on our site, as well as in bookstores all across the US, including non bookstores as well, like Urban Outfitters and yeah. Thank you everyone for tuning in and as always, much love and may the spores be with you. You Transcribed by https://otter.ai
