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I am dressed as if for a funeral, or for New York: black, calf-grazing Yohji Yamamoto dress, white Jil Sander lace-ups. As I make my way to the Ace Hotel in Manhattan earlier this week, thoughts of death float through my mind like a beach ball in a crowded stadium—more free association than doom and gloom—and for good reason. I’m about to try on the last thing one might ever wear: a two-piece burial ensemble embedded with mushrooms.
If you’re one of the 1.3 million viewers who has watched Jae Rhim Lee’s 2011 TED Talk on her innovative death suit, you know where this is going. Lee, an indefatigably curious, MIT-educated artist and entrepreneur, stepped onto that stage in an early prototype (black sturdy fabric, with white dendritic embroidery) and shared her proposal to disrupt the funeral business. There are some 200 environmental toxins coursing through the average body, she explained, citing the Centers for Disease Control; cremation releases them into the atmosphere, while traditional burial employs carcinogenic formaldehyde and other chemicals for preservation. She presented her ecologically sound alternative—those mushrooms—but pre-emptively gave voice to squeamish dissenters: “We want to eat, not to be eaten, by our food, right?”
Five years later, with farm-to-table a well-worn buzzword and household composting hitting the mainstream, we just might be ready to consider, shall we say, a table-to-farm approach, where those hardworking organisms—which release enzymes to quell toxins or aid in binding heavy metals, along with being master decomposers—quietly return us to the earth. This spring, Lee’s company, Coeio (the name riffs on a Latin word meaning “assemble, or come together”), officially launched the Infinity Burial Suit to the public, and this month the Ace is hosting an exhibition in honor of New York Fashion Week.
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To be sure, it’s an unconventional entry into a designer-driven lineup, including Tom Ford’s glittering presentation on Wednesday at the dearly departed Four Seasons Restaurant. But when we spend so much time, so much money, determining what to wear for milestone life events—the one-day-only wedding dress comes to mind—why is it that we often overlook the final and most enduring among them? Subject avoidance is one reason. “Death is the last frontier; it’s the last taboo of the environmental movement,” explains Lee, who found the convergence of art and fashion to be a means of provocation. In that arena, she tells me, “There’s just more openness and acceptance, more, ‘Hey, I get why you’re doing this because you’re trying to create dialogue.’ ”
Lee has done just that: The buzz around Coeio is growing, with next-level fund-raising on the horizon. She envisions building out a range of styles with future designer collaborations, but the version I slip off the hanger at the Ace is surprisingly like her TED Talk prototype: The white stitching echoes the original rootlike motif, while the optimized design by Daniel Silverstein features streamlined flaps and side-seam buttons for easier fastening. (The wearer typically isn’t wriggling into the pants and jacket, as I am.) Lee, who goes by JR, peels back the face flap like a beret and steps back, exclaiming, “It’s amazing! This actually fits you really well, the sleeve length and everything.” And, indeed, I’m oddly at home in the suit, comfortable in the nostalgia-inducing way that it calls to mind footed pajamas and woolen mittens. (Perhaps the end of life is like a return to childhood.) I feel a beanbag-like clump in my left hand. “Wildflower seeds,” says Lee, “and there’s a kind of mushroom that delivers nutrients to plant roots.”
Later that evening, I return to the Ace lobby to see the burial suit animated, as it were, during the first-ever public demonstration. A crowd of spectators, hotel guests, and taxidermy animals looks on as Lee—accessorized with a white coat, white high-tops, and red lipstick—solemnly fastens the suit around a prone performer. A few feet away, the Sora Quartet plays excerpts from John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts (once the president of the New York Mycological Society, he might have approved of the Infinity Burial Project); the loud tinkling of wineglasses seems Cageian as well. As the performer, suit buttoned and face obscured, is guided toward the exit, I catch part of a recording of the composer’s voice: “If anybody is sleepy, let him go to sleep.”
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