Remember Lady Gaga’s infamous meat dress? Australian scientists made a good pairing with a nice bouquet.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia have developed a new kind of fabric that forms itself—without any stitching—by adding bacteria to wine. If this fierce (?) red wine dress isn’t quite your color, they can also make the fabric using white wine or beer. The Bioalloy team has even made T-shirts and swimwear out of the material, which they call “Micro be.”
To design the clothing, the scientists collaborated with contemporary artist Donna Franklin, who created a dress in 2007 made out of living fungus—she fed it special nutrients so that it would change color. Franklin said she wanted to “challenge people’s perceptions of body-garment relationships and our relationship to the natural world and the commodification of that world” with the dress.
So how exactly do you turn a Sauvignon Blanc into your Sunday best? According to a Wired.co.uk article, acetobacter (the bacteria used during the fermentation process that turns wine into vinegar) is added to wine, which creates a lot of fibrous cellulose (the structure that makes up plant cell walls). All non-science majors still following?
Bioalloy cofounder Gary Cass told Wired.co.uk that the cellulose produced by this process is similar to cotton. “It is formed on the surface of the wine, almost as if the bacteria are trying to form a raft to flow on the wine. One could only imagine the sing-a-longs and good times by all the bacteria on this drunken raft,” Cass said.
After created, the material, which The Huffington Post said “smells like wine and feels like ‘sludge’ when wet” (ew), is draped on an inflatable mannequin. The material dries to fit the mannequin and then fits “like a second skin” on your body, Cass told Wired.co.uk.
Don’t expect wine dresses to hit the shelves of Bergdorf’s any time soon—the fabric is easily torn when it’s dry, so it needs a little work before it’s actually wearable. But Cass and Franklin said they’re continuing to develop the material, and they plan on debuting a new frock later this year.
“We hope that it will inspire others to come up with more creative pieces that will direct and/or redirect our future society,” Cass told Wired.co.uk. “Fermented fashion doesn’t need to stay within the fashion world but can inspire new thoughts in many other disciplines, such as medicine, engineering, dentistry or architecture. All you have to do is let your imagination, creativity and ingenuity loose.”
What do you think, collegiettes? Would you ever wear a dress made out of wine? Sound off in the comments below!