Make, unmake, remake.

Helena Elston describes herself as an “alchemist, material researcher and story-teller.” She is currently based in London, and recently completed her Masters in textile design at the Royal College of Art. I stumbled upon her project online, and it immediately caught my attention. The fabrics in her photographs feel so tactile, even if I can only see them from behind my pixelated screen. The time it took for her project to come to life, or rather decompose and mold, is a poetic reflection against the fast fashion industry and reveals the innovative ways in which a new generation of thinkers are creating textiles today. Just like the idea behind pickling vegetables or fermenting fruits, Elston has created her own process with fabrics in which nature takes over with time. It is simple and elegant the way a material can shift and adapt with time and the soil. It is also beautiful the way she makes us see this process, both alive and dead at the same time, in a different context.

We often forget about the interconnectedness of our ecosystem. It is seen in the plants, trees, fungus, and how they communicate with each other or grow in certain patterns. How they regenerate themselves. To make wearable materials from these scientific observations, Elston is making us notice our relation to the life cycles that are so important in nature. We are born, we grow, we die - but we simply exist on a different time scale than plants. The mold and fungus that comes from decomposition should not be seen as something repulsive. The project that Helena Elston has created reveals the beauty in this “mycelium” that she has engaged with. It expresses itself as an honorary tribute to the unwanted.