If Schachtschneider's approach feels revolutionary, all the better. Her latest project, "Vivorium," was inspired by experimentation with a variety of biological materials, including a bacteria engineered to produce indigo—the lustrous blue dye fueling the jeans industry's $8.5 billion annual profit . "Imagining what biotechnology could mean for indigo—what it could mean for the future of denim—pushed me to think about how we could reshape fashion production in a really inventive way." Set in 2043, after the Earth has endured another quarter-century of razed forests and rising seas, "Vivorium" looks towards a dystopian (though still starkly elegant) reality where clothing responds to, rather than drags resources away from, our increasingly polluted environment. Scorched by a depleted ozone layer and plagued by drought, this not-so-distant future feels disturbingly easy to picture—like a glimpse at a post-climate disasterland in which humanity relies on the cooling powers of garments imbued with pond bacteria or sets out to rebuild desiccated landscapes in shoes cobbled from recycled agricultural waste. For Schachtschneider, the burden is on us to reject the ingrained practices of clothing manufacturing that have become literally untenable and forge something new. In a world like "Vivorium"'s, we may not have a choice.