Mushroom Tote
Nov 2022
A bag inspired by sustainable fashion and biodesign (and mushrooms, of course).
Contribution: Design, 3D Modeling, Post-Processing
Technologies: Adobe Illustrator, Fusion360
Sustainability in fashion has always been really important to me, due to the sheer amount of waste and depletion of natural resources that come with fast fashion and mass-producing clothes. In this project, I was inspired by the fashion industry's use of experimental textiles made of sustainable renewable resources like mushrooms, and the fact that mushrooms are one of the most environmentally friendly crops and can even help break down and recycle plastic. I also was motivated by how designers are starting to experiment with 3D-printing as a possibility to reduce waste and mass production.
I wanted to make a bag that looked like it was partly made of mushrooms with other elements made of repurposed plastic items to represent the cycle of decomposition and regrowth of fungi, and more broadly, the circularity we should strive for in the fashion industry. Moreover, I wanted this bag to embody slow fashion -- a mindful, curated, quality-over-quantity approach to clothing production. Thus, I utilized crochet and 3D-printing which inherently require patience and small-scale production. Ideally, this bag would inspire its user to reflect on the circularity and sustainability of their own clothing items and shopping habits.
I developed this in my Interactive Media Arts class Intro to Digital Fabrication taught by Professor Phil Caridi.
Inspiration
During the initial design phase, I was really inspired by artists who played with surrealism, biomimicry, texture, and unconventional materials. I also gathered lots of mushroom images.
Initial Design and 3D Models
I originally wanted to print the bag all as one piece of thin flexible TPU. However, my prints of this version would always fail or go over the allotted time limit because TPU is slower and less precise to print, so I later decided to print the bag in pieces and use PLA instead. Also, to minimize the amount of 3D printing I had to do (since it's time + resource intensive), I laser cut sheets of acrylic for the flat panels of the bag that didn't need any special 3D detailing.
For the mushrooms, I wanted to print lots of individual mushrooms and glue them on in overlapping layers, but I later realized that would look messy, so I decided to print them all at once in a cluster which I could then attach straight onto the side of the bag.
Improved Design and 3D Models
Fabrication Process
Final Product
