A new research project aims to turn wine into dresses with a
creative – if slightly gross – colony of bacteria. While most of
us worry about spilling wine onto our clothes, researchers at
the Bioalloy laboratories at the University of Western Australia
have developed a program to turn wine into clothes by utilising
wine’s natural fermentation process. Entitled Micro'be' (see,
scientists can be funny too), the fermented fashion project uses
a colony of Acetobacter bacteria — the kind that ferment wine
into vinegar – to create 'micro fibrils of cellulose', a
material similar to cotton which is used to fashion the
garments. While the research team initially started creating the
Micro'be' fabric from fermented from red wine, they’ve now moved
on to producing it from fermented white wine, beer and even
Guinness. Although the Micro'be' fashion fabric could be the
answer to cotton shortages around the world, we don’t expect to
see the dresses on sale in Topshop anytime soon. What do you
think? Would you wear clothin