THE JOURNAL
Expect mushrooms to be everywhere this autumn. In woodlands, naturally. Amid the grass at your local park (you know the ones to look for, right? 😉). And plastered across T-shirts, it says here. The latest craze sweeping social media that you need to read up on right now is mushroomcore. Sure, you won’t say no to a bit of shaved truffle on your risotto, but do you know your fly agaric from your pink disco? Here are the answers from our resident mycologist, who will be your guide on this trip.
So, mushroomcore? Let’s get to the root of this trend, then.
Mycelium.
Your what?
Mycelium is the branching network of hyphae found under the soil and the main vegetative part of fungus – the mushrooms that we see on the surface are just the fruiting bodies. But you can also think of the mycelium as a worldwide web for the woods, transporting nutrients and, it’s now thought, information between fungi and plants. Rather than roots, but we digress.
Fascinating, but what has this got to do with fashion?
Well, we predict that you’ll be seeing a lot of mushrooms this autumn.
Are we talking… psilocybins?
As in mushrooms you wear.
Oh, like athlete’s foot.
Not quite. The new season promises great blooms of mushrooms that you won’t want to treat with antifungal remedies. Upstart brands such as FRIENDS WITH ANIMALS, GENERAL ADMISSION and Good Morning Tapes, not to mention streetwear stalwart Undercover, have tapped into a cultural shift towards the mystical, pastoral and even, dare we say it, occult. (You can see examples of this in MR PORTER’s Super Mart – but only if you’re quick.)
I can certainly smell something in the air. And mushrooms obviously have something to do with this…
Yes, amid the old-school new-aged imagery, mushrooms and toadstools take centre stage. It’s part of a wider trend called “goblincore”, which is itself billed as a grubbier, dirtier, scuzzier version of cottagecore.
Why does it have to be something-core? It’s like every news story that’s suffixed with -gate.
Cottagecore was coined on Tumblr a few years ago, but has been bubbling up for a decade or so and harks back even further, to a rural idyll of the long-lost past. It’s about foraging, baking and pottery, as well as flowery embroidery. In short, a whimsical vision of the countryside, as imagined by people that don’t live there.
Townies.
Yeah, those guys. Goblincore is considered more authentic, in that it is more about frogs, slugs and slime, getting mud under its fingernails. Mushroomcore shares much of the same aesthetic as goblincore, although with a focus on fungus. Either way, this season, if it’s away with the fairies, it’s bang on trend.
And you have empirical evidence to back up this claim?
TikTok, Pinterest and Reddit, all major hubs of humanity’s own mycelium – the internet – have all reported massive spikes of interest in anything related to nature and folklore. But mushrooms are developing a cult of their own.
Mr Pete Davidson on the set of The King Of Staten Island, New York City, 24 June 2019. Photograph by Mr Bobby Bank/Getty Images
Festering, more like. And who is championing this trend?
An obvious gateway into this world is the scumbro movement that has released its spores over the past few years. Mr Pete Davidson, a posterboy of the look, is also a mushroom proponent – at least in terms of clothing. He’s been sporting T-shirts with fungi prints as far back as 2019, and is clearly a fan of mushroom-themed jewellery.
He seems like a fun guy. But why mushrooms specifically?
It’s not just mushrooms, it’s also plants, vegetables and woodland creatures of all descriptions printed onto T-shirts, key rings and wallets. There are even some that, as far as we know, don’t actually exist – such as sprites, gnomes and wizards. And goblins…
Isn’t there an issue with goblins?
Goblincore, the umbrella term, is somewhat problematic. There are suggestions that goblins’ place in mythology comes with questionable racial baggage. Mushroomcore, meanwhile, is full of the good things that Gen Z can get behind. Certainly, the fluid nature of mushrooms themselves, which blur not just gender but biological classifications, have their appeal. “Mushrooms are huge in the community and some species of fungi have thousands of sexes,” a former trend expert at Tumblr told The Guardian. “It’s just about vibing and existing, not fitting into a mould.”
I thought fitting into a mould was the whole point?
But that’s not all there is to love about mushrooms. As well as being used to make beer, bread and biologics, fungi can be woven into clothes themselves. That mycelium we mentioned earlier can be employed in a vegan alternative to leather. Earlier this year, adidas released a pair of Stan Smiths made from the stuff.
Magic.
That’s before we even get to the fact that there’s around 30 known species of mushrooms that glow in the dark.
Plus, due to a weird quirk in classification etymology, the British Mycological Society has gone a bit nuts in recent years and taken it upon itself to give new species of mushrooms some really trippy common English names.
Such as?
Take your pick from bug sputnik, cinnamon jellybaby and drumstick truffleclub. Or, our favourite, pink disco.
We’ll have whatever they’re foraging. (Although, we should note, only with the guidance of a trained mycologist.)
In so many ways, mushrooms really are about opening the doors of perception.
Is that in the new Countryside Code?