Atelier Dasha Tsapenko's MYC_Couture
SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS
People have long praised couture for its ability to shock. But what if fashion didn’t just shock people with its looks but also made them think about what it was made of? Atelier Dasha Tsapenko’s ongoing project, MYC_Couture, is based on that idea. Instead of making clothes, she grows them.
Tsapenko has made clothes out of fungi, hemp, and flax; living collaborations between the designer and the organism. The coats and gowns that came out of this unusual partnership are dramatic and sculptural. They look like couture fantasy, but their biology is what makes them new. The garments grow back, break down, and eventually go back to the earth. Tsapenko has introduced the new idea of “bioluxury”, which is a model that accepts change and that things don’t last, instead of fighting against change.
“Textures and materials are not produced; they grow.”
Dasha Tsapenko
This vision is not a gimmick or a small test. MYC_Couture, understands that a shift in worldview from garments as static objects to garments as part of ecological cycles isn’t about keeping things the same, it’s about celebrating change, growth, and coming back.
No stranger to events like Dutch Design Week, Copenhagen Fashion Week, and now at Munich Fabric Start, you will find MYC_Couture housed in the SUSTAINABLE INNOVATIONS space. There she hopes to start a conversation about changing the way fashion and ecology are connected. Her lesson is both simple and radical: sustainability cannot be achieved by efficiency tweaks alone.
H2 | SI
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