Designer Suzanne Lee is developing a kombucha-based material that can be used in clothes and footwear.
From wikipedia :-
BioCouture is a research project using nature to suggest an innovative future fashion vision. Suzanne Lee uses microbial-cellulose (composed of millions of tiny bacteria grown in bathtubs of sweet green tea) to produce clothing. The idea is to ‘grow a dress in a vat of liquid’.
BioCouture has been included in Time Magazine’s annual roundup of The Top 50 Best Inventions of 2010.
Like this indigo dyed jacket.
“Using a symbiotic mixture of sugars, yeasts and other microorganisms which spin Cellulose in a fermentation process”.
The material once spun looks rather like leather and is laid out to dry.
When parts are overlaid in the drying process they knit themselves together forming seams.
For more info check out www.biocouture.co.uk, or the new site www.biocouture.posterous.com.
74 FOOTWEAR DESIGN CONSULTING 