Designer Jae Rhim Lee is concerned about the carcinogenic affects of the funerary preservative formaldehyde. That's why she's invented the Infinity Burial Suit — a.k.a. the Mushroom Death Suit — a postmortem garment designed to consume the wearer's corpse.


In an interview with New Scientist the artist described how she's training the mushrooms to process her body.

The US government recently upgraded formaldehyde from a probable carcinogen to a known carcinogen, so by trying to preserve the body we poison the living [...] I thought I could train a toxin-cleaning edible mushroom to eat my body. These mushrooms, which usually grow on wood and decaying material in the forest, can be trained to grow on pretty much any organic material and break it down. So I started collecting my hair, nails and skin so I could pick the best mushrooms to become Infinity Mushrooms, to recognise and eat my body after I die.


She has yet to test the suit and thinks it could use such sartorial touches as gelatin to promote fungus growth. Frankly, I think this could make for a fantastic business casual garment. Screw a power tie, imagine those schmucks' faces when you roll into next week's board meeting sporting this season's Mycological Corpse Pajamas.

[Infinity Burial Project via BLDGBLOG]