The Girl with the Hurricane Brain

Together with musicians from the ‘Lydenskab’ ensemble, Sofie Piil Grau and Laura Rathschau cultivated kombucha leather over a five-month period using water, tea and sugar.

This resulted in self-cultivated, biodegradable kombucha costumes created for the opera ‘The Girl with the Hurricane Brain’, performed during the Copenhagen Opera Festival in 2024. As costumes are often used for only a short period of time, there is great potential in finding sustainable alternatives to the classic production of textiles.

The project sensuously and tangibly communicates how costumes made of kombucha leather can help present new aesthetic narratives on soil, live organisms and the scope for re-imagining the production of textiles in new, astonishing ways.

Clothing and textiles are responsible for a significant portion of global carbon emissions. The project emerges from a wish to develop textile production practices that are part of sustainable value chains, instead of adversely impacting ecosystems.