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This article was produced in partnership with Under Armour x Unless. We collaborate with a limited number of brands whose values align with ours. As always, every word is shaped through THE GOODS lens.
TL;DR
At Milan Design Week, Under Armour and Eric Liedtke’s Unless Collective dropped a compostable streetwear capsule designed to disappear—literally. Made entirely from plants and minerals, the garments break down in a composter on in the earth and mark a serious pivot from performative sustainability to real regenerative design. Backed by science, backed by Under Armour, and backed by worms (yes, real ones), this might be the moment that sets a precedent sportswear—and forces the rest of the apparel / fashion industry to catch up.
MILAN, Italy - Innovation right now? Feels like a group chat between ChatGPT, the LinkedIn algorithm and Siri. Being played at 2x speed, and at times barely making sense. Everything’s moving fast—too fast. Slides get approved before ideas form. Drops happen before desire even kicks in. Feels less like progress, more like we’re all shuffling toward a cliff face in limited-edition sneakers.
So pulling up to the Under Armour x Unless Collective activation at Milan Design Week, greeted by moss and watching real earth worms chilling out in a dug-up pile of decomposing shirts. Our thoughts? Luxury. The kind you can’t unbox.
Standing in front of something that rots—in a good way—was strangely comforting. Real soil. Real science. Real innovation. Garments breaking up with the planet, gently. If we’d made our Café Kitsuné flat whites takeaway, they would’ve gone cold while we stood there, locked in, staring into the compost like it was a portal.
According to the latest research, the average human now carries 50% more microplastics in their body than they did in 2016. These particles have been detected in our lungs, bloodstream—and most recently, our brains.
“There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with,” said Matthew Campen, Director of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of New Mexico.
The fashion industry plays a central role. The Marine Conservation Society estimates that 11 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year, with nearly 1 million tonnes already fragmented into microplastics—from cosmetics, synthetic fibres, tyres and clothing.
So when the invite landed—the launch of a regenerative streetwear capsule by Unless Collective and Under Armour, unveiled at Milan Design Week, I was invested.
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If you’ve ever watched someone you love get sick—really sick—you start asking different questions. How does a seemingly healthy person break down? The answers are complex — but the culprits are increasingly hard to ignore. Plastics. Soil. Air. Cumulative exposure. These aren’t abstract anymore. They’re ambient. They’re intimate. And they’re everywhere.
What caught me wasn’t the look—it was the language. A shift from harm reduction to full disappearance. A product with an endgame built in.
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Subscribe now →And debuting it at Milan Design Week was a quiet flex for the design set—proof that good design isn’t just about how it wears. It’s about what it becomes. As someone raised around composters, water butts, and the occasional soakaway (hi Dad), I felt it. The bio-design wasn’t a gimmick—it echoed the closed-loop systems the earth already knows how to run.
“We’re not just making stuff,” said Eric Liedtke, co-founder of Unless and EVP of brand strategy at Under Armour.
“We’re making stuff that goes away.”
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It’s early. A repair program down the line? Let’s hope so. But for now, these clothes do the unthinkable: vanish without a trace—and give back as they go.
Unless Collective: Making Good Dirt
The capsule, presented in a minimalist installation titled “From Soil to Soil,” featured garments made entirely from plants and minerals, without a single gram of plastic. On display: hoodies dyed with water-based inks, jackets insulated with kapok fibre, shirts fastened with corozo nut buttons. At its centre: a t-shirt halfway through decomposition, gently crumbling into compost.
Liedtke describes it succinctly: “All of our products make good dirt.”
The showpiece is a skate shoe known as The Degenerator—a fully compostable model made with coconut husk and natural latex. There is no foam. No glue. And no elastic. Even the stretch in garments is engineered mechanically rather than synthetically.
Liedtke doesn’t sugarcoat it—legacy fashion still clings to synthetics like a crutch: “If you’re wearing stretch or foam, it’s basically melted plastic.”
And for skeptics asking if a T-shirt can really disappear, he offers physical proof: “This shirt? Thirty days in a rotary composter. Not an industrial one—a countertop one, like you’d use in your garden.”
The pieces take cues from durable American streetwear—Dickies, Champion, Carhartt. Staples, reprogrammed through a bio-material lens. Built to last in your wardrobe, then break down when they’re no longer needed.
“We started simple,” Liedtke explained. “Because we had to prove the science first.”
What Patagonia Hasn’t Solved (Yet)
Sustainability is everywhere—but few brands talk about what happens after the final wear. Even Patagonia, long seen as the industry’s ethical benchmark, still leans heavily on synthetics in performance gear. Its 2025 pledge to ditch fossil-based virgin materials? Admirable. But not yet real.
Unless takes it further. This isn’t about closed-loop theory. This is wearability and decomposition—designed into the pattern.
Strategy in the Soil
Unless was born in Portland around a radical premise: garments that disappear. Regenerative by default, not by marketing. But like most ideas ahead of the curve, it hit a wall—vision intact, funding gone.
Meanwhile, Under Armour was busy aging out of its compression-wear adolescence. The brand has spent the last decade searching for a future-facing identity.
The 2024 acquisition was a realignment, and bringing in Eric Liedtke was surgical. At Adidas, he helped architect the Yeezy launch and led the brand’s earliest sustainability moves. He understands hype—but more importantly, he understands infrastructure.
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When Kevin Plank backed Unless, he wasn’t just buying into a concept. He was betting on Liedtke’s system-level thinking. “Going out on my own as a startup?” Liedtke laughed. “I don’t recommend it. You’re either born for it or not—and I was not.”
But he was clearly born for this.
“We created the performance wear category,” Plank said in Milan. “Now we want to lead the next one.”
The Milan capsule is only the beginning. The first full collection drops later this year. With Under Armour’s labs, supply chain, and design team behind it, the goal is to scale—from hoodies and jackets to compression layers, running shorts, even footwear. The ambition? A post-plastic future for sport.
Regeneration Is Not a Mood
Most fashion still fakes circularity. “Sustainable” fabrics shed microfibres. “Recyclable” synthetics rarely get reused. “Durable” just delays the landfill.
This capsule is a systems reset that takes a harder route: regeneration. Every fibre, every fastening, considered for performance and decay.
Join 49,000+ brand leaders getting smarter every week.
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Subscribe now →The path forward is technical. The barriers are many. But Liedtke’s pace feels deliberate. Less about perfection. More about systems in motion. “Sustainability is a promise,” Liedtke said. “Regeneration is a system.”
And while most brands ask customers to deal with end-of-life, Liedtke flips the question entirely: “Tell me another product company that takes responsibility for their product once you’re done with it. You won’t find one.”
The Business of Disappearance
This is not a $300 flex drop. Prices start at $30.
Which raises a bigger question: if an independent label, now backed by a global sports brand, can make compostable gear at an everyday price—why can’t others follow?
“If you’re still making things that never die,” Liedtke said, “what exactly are you building for?”
The UNLESS x Under Armour capsule isn’t flawless. Sizing’s still a little chaotic and I’d love to see a proper white tee in the mix. But this feels like actual progress. And yes—I’m already irrationally emotionally attached to a pair of green corduroys that don’t drop until late 2025. Europe, you’re on notice.
No recycled synthetics. No vague supply chain spin. Just a direct proposition: Can clothing return to the earth—and mean it?
And if regeneration isn’t the future of fashion—what are we even designing for?
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