Mycelium is fluid, it connects and deconstructs. The Venus in Cancer Mycelium Gender Expansive Lingerie Collection does just that.
Sofía (she, her, they, them) was speaking with friends of friends in the sunny beaches of the isles of Rio Paraná in Argentina where she discovered the independent lingerie industry of Rosario. She learned that there were a handful of designers creating colorful and flattering lingerie and swimwear for queer bodies and bodies of all sizes. Clothes that just plainly differed from the usual archetype of the catalogs she grew up flipping through. Even more amazingly so, these designers were handcrafting the garments, or working closely with small scale, family-owned businesses to carry out production. This eye-opening experience, learning that her great grandmother was a high fashion seamstress, and the current transformational period of her career and relationship led Sofía to develop a great desire to open her own lingerie boutique for queer people.
Back in the U.S., Sofía serendipitously came across the Instagram profile of a Rosario-based, woman-owned brand called Marqués Lencería whom she soon collaborated with to curate their first lingerie collection, the Yrupẽ Lingerie Collaboration, and then the Mycelium Lingerie Collection. Sofía’s roots in Rosario and respect for the city’s unique history as an innovative fashion hub, combined with her trust in Marqués’ thoughtful, creative, and inclusive business model, made this partnership obvious.
While Marqués supported the design and production, Ignacio Ercole, Sofía’s partner and esteemed artist from Cordoba, Argentina, created artwork for the lingerie. The illustration floods the fabric with bold atmospheric motions that become a compliment to one’s experience with the set while maintaining a delicate and minimalistic color palette. As the Venus in Cancer Art Director at the time, a non-binary person, and inspiration for this work, Ignacio was an integral advisor for the lingerie design.
In an interview with La Curva de la Moda, Sara Maino Sozzani explained that a brand cannot be 100% sustainable, however, it can be responsible socially, ethically, and politically. By being values-aligned with Marqués Lencería from the start– on a professional and personal level– collaborating with them on this project was a joint effort of responsible production. Lingerie quantities were kept low, range in sizes wide, gender assignment non-existent, design and art original and human-made, scraps of leftover fabric repurposed, and production within a secular economy. The Mycelium Lingerie Collection is luxurious and precious, and deeply special in the time, dedication, and thoughtfulness of its process– and because few people in the world have a set that looks like it.
With the Mycelium Lingerie Collection, we are not making lingerie for the male gaze– strategies heavily utilized for decades to feed capitalism. The Mycelium Lingerie Collection is telling the stories of finding deep joy in what we wear, affirming experiences that come from wearing clothes made for our bodies, and experimenting with the same clothes to create endless outfit iterations.
While this attempt to make strides toward more expansive fashion and bring awareness to independent brands may not be perfect, it is one that is ever evolving as is the queer experience. We manifest more stories to tell through what we birth and share with you.
This is an original blog post written by Sofía Lara Carbone without AI tools. Sofía is a global health professional, yoga instructor, and CEO of Venus in Cancer. To learn more about Venus in Cancer’s work with Marqués Lencería, as well as Marqués’ story, please revisit this blog. Special thanks to my family in Argentina who helped transport and store the lingerie post production.