In the 1800s, consumption was the name of a terrible, yet weirdly chic, wasting disease later known as tuberculosis, glamorized in both society and the arts. “I should like to die from consumption,” the romantic poet Byron reportedly said. The novelist George Sand said of her lover, the composer Frédéric Chopin, that he “coughs with infinite grace.”

Ever since, the term consumption has been shorthand for many of our own seductive worst impulses — including the desire to jam our wardrobes full of stuff — along with apparent disregard for the reality of our situation. Once upon a time, consumption generally implied death for a person; today, it has begun to imply death for the planet.

And yet, when it comes to clothes, we tend to overlook the fact that people (and moths) are not the only consumers around, and the act of consumption is not just about purchasing.

Sometimes, for example, it’s about microbes. They’re the Next Big Thing (or next teeny-tiny thing) in an approach to clothing that focuses not just on the materials we use to make what we wear, but what happens to those materials when all the wearing is done. Especially when those materials happen to be the sort of materials currently demonized as part of the ocean plastics crisis. Which is to say: polyester.