The future of textiles is looking more like science fiction. Check out the innovative design of Suzanne Lee, creative director of Biocouture. She’s using bacteria to grow fabric. The bacteria produce a microfiber that entangles and intertwines to form a gelatin like membrane. Drying the membrane yields a sheet of material that can be cut, manipulated, and sewn together like traditional fabric. A nontraditional feature of the garments would be their tendency to absorb and hold water. Scientists are working on manipulating the bacteria further to prevent this problem.
There are advantages to this microbial cellulose as opposed to plant cellulose. Plant cellulose is the substance used to make paper, cloth, etc. from natural resources. The microbial cellulose has a longer fiber length which makes it stronger, it can be grown to virtually any shape, and it’s easy to produce. Some disadvantages are that it’s more expensive to produce commercially and there’s less capacity for large scale production.
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| Biocouture "Denim" Jacket |
Currently the medical field is using this futuristic textile for wound dressings and research is being done on using it for artificial blood vessels and soft tissue replacement. Another end use for the product, not medically related: Sony used it as an acoustic membrane in high end ear phones.
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| Biocouture button down |
The adoption of this type of textile will be a slow process. The cool factor is already in place with the fabric but the garments will have to perform and more research/adjustments will have to be made to get to that point. As more and more people across the globe decide that sustainability of our planet is more important than saving a few bucks we will see a continuation of this kind of product development. Until then, we will probably not be seeing this on the fashion runways of Paris, Milan, London, and New York.
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| Biocouture Shoe |
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