A so-called “eco-warrior” from New York City has designed, grown and worn a totally unique and one-of-a-kind wedding dress, which is made completely out of mushrooms.
To be more specific, the dress, made by Erin Smith, a former artist at Microsoft, was styled from old tree mulch and fungus, and Smith is now encouraging other brides-to-be to follow suit.
It may not be the most elegant looking bridal gown you’ve ever laid eyes on, but bearing in mind it only cost around $40 in total to make, what were you expecting?
Smith told reporters , as reported by the Huffington Post, “I like the [idea] that maybe you change into something else for dancing, and you could literally tear the dress apart and put it in your garden, and it would literally keep growing with you,” she said.
Making a wedding dress from fungus is no simple task, as Smith will tell you, having molded the mushroom material into the shape of a gown, and then wrapping herself in sheets of mycelium.
Even though tried her best to get her wedding dress completed for her big day, Smith didn’t manage it and ended up walking down the aisle in a similarly cheap thrift store bridal gown, of sorts.
As she told reporters during an interview with The Guardian, “I think the ability for us to grow our own clothing could have great positive potential. The concept behind a grown wedding dress was to take a one-time-use object and rethink its construction in order to have an appropriate material lifespan,” she said .
On top of that, money is certainly a motivation here, as Smith revealed that average price for a wedding dress in America is around the $1,200 mark. As Smith said, ‘The wedding dress is a perfect example of a one-time-use, energy intensive and entirely non-sustainable model that is representative of so many of the choices that we make daily.”
