‘BioCouture’ using nature is an innovative future fashion vision. Developed from the bacteria Acetobacter which are usually used to turn green tea into the fermented beverage kombucha, producing floating mats of cellulose, Suzanne Lee, the Director of The BioCouture Research Project, has figured out how to harvest and dry them. Most people throw away the bacterially produced cellulose mat as a waste by-product but the inventor is now using it to make her unique line of BioCouture clothing from the resulting fabric, which has a vaguely skin like texture, and can be moulded and sewn into shirts and coats.
Natural, non-toxic and compostable, the fabric if grown in bioreactors in the lab would seem to be a perfect alternative to cotton, but has the only problem of breaking down a little too easily, which is stopping it from becoming commercial at the moment. In the need of becoming more durable, Alexander Bismarck at Imperial College London plans to add water-repelling molecules into the bioreactor whilst the bacteria are making the cellulose, which will become part of the fabric’s structure to stop it going mushy when it gets wet, making it suitable for ready to wear use in the coming future.
