Natural Progression: How Fungi Is Shaping Up To Be the Future of Footwear

It's no secret that the sneaker scene has a sustainability issue. But what if we could grow our sneakers? As the industry looks towards a more planet-friendly future, insiders have been looking for the next big thing in sneaker construction, and it turns out it could come from mushrooms.

Now mushrooms, or more specifically, mycelium (more on that later) have been the victim of some pretty bad press recently, but allow us to reassure you that in this case, they’re nowhere near as harmful as The Last of Us has made them out to be. Instead, mycelium has the potential to allow us to continue wearing high-heat kicks, without having to use any of the nasty fossil fuels that power the faux leather process, and instead, still doing the planet some good.

Trialled by brands like Hermès, GANNI and Balenciaga, the use of mycelium in fashion is quickly gaining momentum, though sneaker brands are still trailing a little behind. That could be about to change, however, as some young designers are pushing themselves to the forefront by being willing to experiment with the material in order to craft footwear. We caught up with Nicholas Rapagnani, who specialises in designing for sustainability to find out more about the future of fungi in footwear.

Of course! It's kind of a long story, but I'll try and keep it short! I am an Italian guy - I come from a really small city in Italy, but as far as sneakers are concerned, I started to become a sneakerhead really randomly. I didn't even know the term sneakerhead, I just started to love shoes while I was still really young. It was love at first sight. I don't know why it happened but I was really curious about shoes, shapes, materials, colours, styles, brands - how people would wear them, and the street culture behind them. That passion just grew over the years, and it became my reason for living. I understood that I didn't want to just collect shoes, but back then I didn't know the problems behind the industry, I was just chasing the pairs I thought were super cool and that I wanted to have in my collection.

Over time, I realised that I wanted to move from my passive role as a buyer to have an active role as a designer: to become a person that could change and shape things with my ideas. I started to study natural design, which is completely different to just footwear design, and I fell in love with the materials and manufacturing process, and all the different ways of making things: modelling, and 3D-printing, which six years ago was in its early stages within the footwear world. From that point on, I dug into the sustainability aspects behind shoes, because as we know, they have huge ecological and sociological issues. After the first sneaker concept I made for my Bachelor's thesis, I went on to study eco-social design, which doesn't just focus on products and materials, but also a multidisciplinary approach to help to solve these problems. This then formed the basis of my growing sneakers project. As a kid I loved science, so all my interests came together in that project. I thought it was cool not to just level up my mission for the present, but also my mission for the future, which was to promote growing things rather than just manufacturing them.

I'll try to keep it simple because it can be really complex! First of all, mushroom leather is an example of what we can do with mycelium. Mushroom-based leather is one of the most innovative new materials developed in the last decade. But mycelium itself, first of all, is a microorganism - so something that we don't usually see in our lives, but it's present and almost everywhere.

Think of the mould you might find on food, that is a kind of fungi. So these microorganisms, which are normally known as fungi, have these regenerative parts that resemble the roots of plants, and they develop underground in a root-like form. Depending on the humidity and conditions, this spreads underground in a forest to find substances and nutrients. They digest these, and incorporate them into their growing structure, to the point where they don't find anything anymore, and that's when mushrooms will grow out of the underground. The mushrooms are the fruits of mycelium, just like apples are the fruits of the apple tree.

At that moment, the fruits spread the spores around for the mycelium to replicate in other zones thanks to the air that moves them. Mycelium is actually one of the most clever microorganisms that I've ever met, and I say met because I thought it was a thing before, but it being a living organism completely changed my perception of it. I used to communicate with it, kind of - not in Italian or in English, but you know, in its own words, understanding how it works.

It was also discovered that certain species, in predetermined conditions, can create materials. This wide, root-like structure, depending on how it grows, can create stable materials for us to use, and it'll grow depending on the conditions we want to give it. Mushroom leather, for example, is just a mycelium mat, which is really highly compressed, which is then given a texture and a colour, and sometimes additives (because we still have to find compromises in order to use it in the market) and this is an example of the material itself.

So these issues are both ecological and sociological as I was saying before, and they're strongly connected to each other. They're pretty much related to a sneaker's linear lifestyle, which is really dangerous, especially when you factor in raw material extraction and manufacturing, but also the global distribution network which pollutes in other ways.

So, to take my project as an example - its aim was to prove that it's already possible to invest in a geo-local approach to production. That wouldn't mean saying goodbye to global designs, but it would mean having locally-centred manufacturers in different places, using local resources and local materials. This is already an intrinsic part of the mycelium process. It has nothing to do with other materials, you just need a tiny piece of mycelium to grow and replicate so it's already more sustainable, rather than having to source rubber from South America, certain fabrics from Europe or from Africa, and bringing everything together in another place to manufacturer a shoe that'll be shipped out all over the world.

Of course, mycelium as a growing material should and could be the focus of a company's research and development processes to help reduce our carbon footprint in general. I truly believe that it has a strong connection with nature - it can help us reconnect with the outside world - but we still need time to develop these materials before they will fit into the footwear industry we know today.

History always repeats itself. It is difficult to change a population's minds. This is because sometimes doubts are stronger than certainties, and no one is sure what the future is going to be like. So, leather is ready today, and it's still an incredible material to work with in shoes and fashion, and all of the alternatives produced nowadays (even those produced from fruit or bioplastic, or even grown like mushroom leather) resemble animal leather, but don't feel the same. I feel like designers, producers, companies, and CEOs, have to really start now to understand the importance of experimenting to find the best alternatives to leather.

I feel the key to establishing this future biological craftsmanship is collaboration. Just like mycelium connects underground, we really need more connection. There are so many start-ups ready to share these biological innovations with the world, like Modern Synthesis and Mycotech Labs, but some of the bigger companies aren't interested in the future of the world. I feel that this is wrong. We need more of an exchange of information between academics and companies, and between these start-ups and the companies that produce shoes, and all scientists and designers, so that companies can implement more growing materials and lab procedures inside their products and premises. Basically, we need more expertise in different fields - where someone who designs a shoe can also be a scientist, for example.

During the last few months, I have been trying to implement AI inside my own design methodology in order to integrate mycelium and other microorganisms into sneaker concepts. I guess such visual experiments could really help shape the future of footwear, including growing processes of materials, textures and components. It is such an important factor to visualise fungi, algae and bacteria being part of our sneakers, and since there isn’t a “Growing Sneaker” yet, I believe AI is able to close this gap between the present and future. So, I hope to be a source of inspiration for other designers to bring this wave even further with never expected ideas and designs!

As a sneakerhead myself, the first thing I'd do is change how I perceive the culture. We are part of the problem, so I say don't follow the hype but think more about what you want, what you need and what you think is cool, not what everyone else is telling you is cool.

Secondly, buy more consciously - sometimes it's not the shoes themselves that are the problem, it's the mass production, so it's kind of an act of rebellion to say no and to be able to decide for yourself.

Third, if you're a real sneakerhead, make sure you do a lot of research about the sneaker game and culture because things are always changing and a lot of new things are going on. Understand which new technologies and new materials are being released, because it's not just Nike and adidas that are experimenting with these things, there are many more brands doing it. There are so many brands that should be supported when it comes to thinking about the future of the footwear industry - there's a German brand called Nat-2 that's super ahead when it comes to envisioning new materials - it's even using blood to make parts of shoes.

Finally, I really want to shout out Zellerfeld, over the past year it produced amazing designs and opened up bigger premises in order to make its shoes available worldwide following its collab with Heron Preston, I think that just goes to show how important collaboration within the space really is, and what we can do when we work together and push for change.

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