Short introduction to Suzanne Lee
Suzanne Lee is a researcher and designer from the School of Fashion & Textiles at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She is also an author of the 2007 book, Fashioning The Future: tomorrow’s wardrobe, which was the first publication to explore how technology could transform fashion.
She researched into Bio Couture, a type of fiber that can be decomposed by living beings. Its rationale is using the microorganism to foster the growth of vegetable fiber, also known in biological term as cellulose. In the following TED video, she shares how the raw materials of Bio Couture can be grown into fashion wearables and the pros and cons of such fashion wear.
Bio Couture
Bio Couture is a London-based design consultancy that is pioneering the use of bio-materials for the fashion, sportswear and luxury sectors.
“There’s a whole spectrum of organisms that can grow material,”
The founder of Bio Couture, Suzanne Lee, explores how organisms like bacteria, yeast, fungi and algae could be harnessed to produce fabrics. She uses a kombucha recipe (tea + sugar + a few microbes + a little time), a symbiotic mix of bacteria, yeasts and other micro-organisms, which spin cellulose in a fermentation process. After a harvest, the fermented liquid can be reused to grow more cellulose, a cycle that repeats over and over again. The way she has applied the microorganism’s survival mechanism, where bacteria feeds on the sugar in the fermented liquid, to the design on the fiber is a concept of Biomimicry, which is to transform the observations of the nature to the design of the clothing.
“What attracts me to it is that it’s compostable. It’s not just biodegradable, it’s compostable. So you could throw it away like you would your vegetable peelings.”
Positive attributes
The creation of biodegradable and compostable clothing is one positive attribute that Bio Couture brought to us. Since Bio Couture can be produced without creating pollution to the environment, it will not damage the environment. Therefore, it can become an ecological design for the sustainable use.
Another good thing about Bio Couture would be that we can make the fibre change color without using dye by a process of iron oxidation. Organic patterning can be made using fruit and vegetable staining. The use of indigo will make it anti-microbial, an agent that kills microorganisms or inhibits their growth. In fact, cotton would take up to 18 dips in indigo to achieve a colour as dark as dipping the cellulose once in indigo because of the super-absorbency of the cellulose.
In fact, we can grow the fibre at a waste sugar stream from a food processing plant.
Negative attributes
There are a few limitations and procedures to pay attention to in the growing process. A constant optimum temperature is required for the growth, thus Lee used a heat mat to sit the bath on and a thermostat to regulate the temperature of the bath. After harvesting the cellulose sheet, she washed it in cold, soapy water. The cellulose sheet would be heavy with 90% of it made up of water. Lee would then spread it out on a wooden sheet till it dries into something that looks like a flexible vegetable leather, which can then be sown into wearables.
“What I can’t yet do is make it water-resistant.”
While the super-absorbency of the fibre allows for more effective dying, the hydrophilic nature of the garment would not only require time for drying but also fall apart due to the heaviness from the volume of rainwater absorbed on rainy days.
“The first thing is to be clear that the clothing is the same basic fiber as their cotton t-shirt – it’s pure cellulose – it has no bacteria in it.”
A few other challenges would be common misunderstandings of such wearables. One of the common misunderstandings was that people thought the clothes are made of bacteria. The material for the clothes may be constructed with the help of microbes but they have no bacteria in it. Also, the clothes are not GM unlike some cotton t-shirt.
Bacterial cellulose is already being used for wound healing, and possibly in the future for biocompatible blood vessels and even replacement bone tissue. But with synthetic biology, we can actually imagine engineering this bacterium to produce something that gives us the quality, quantity and shape of material that we desire. Imagine growing consumable products with bacterial cellulose like a bed, a car and a house!
To conclude, while the discovery of Bio Couture with the concept of Biomimicry can be exciting, there is still much room for improvement in the scientific and technological aspect of the garment before we can stop harvesting leather at the expense of living animals and start mass-producing such wearables to everyone and not just the elites.
Adapted from
http://www.academia.edu/5119373/Nature-inspired_Fashion_Design_through_The_Theory_of_Biomimicry
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/02/12/movie-biocouture-microbes-clothing-wearable-futures/
Interview: Suzanne Lee, Fashion Innovator Who Grows Clothing in the Laboratory
Fantastic post! I am also very interested on Bio-mimicry and Bio Couture . Another similar project is the The Beer Dress , a dress made from the bacterial fermentation of beer. With the advanced evolution of microbial cellulose technology, this new and improved material is very delicate, pure white and inscribed with random biological etchings. Here it is the link :http://nanollose.com/
Thank you so much!
Cool! I am amazed at how a dress made from beer can be so white and look so sturdy…did they add special dyes? Thanks for the great share!
Excellent post! Beautifully written and well researched. It is interesting how our clothing is made from materials that have such a long tradition, but now we have the technology to invent new materials, new bio-substances that don’t involve killing animals and have a much softer carbon footprint.
This is really good! Great great research! and… no wonder Saint Martin is a <3 <3 top fashion school #kyyaaaa okay I did aim for that school *cry.
Please ignore my emo opening hahaha so, what do you think about Bio Couture? You are into it, or against it?
And, is this bio couture degradable? If I left it on the ground for one week, for example, will it decompose? I feel a bit disappointed if it is easily degradable. I want outfits that last long.
Hey Felicia~ Aw don’t be too disappointed…you don’t need to be in a top fashion school to be a top fashion designer 😉
Personally, I was intrigued by the idea of growing clothes and thought that it is a really good idea of sustainable wearables, especially because I did a brief research into clothing wastage for my project work in junior college and felt strongly against the idea of clothes piling on the waste fields every now and then. I am into the idea of sustainable wear where clothing can decompose faster than the current cotton ones, especially in the age where we can afford to change our set of clothes each year or perhaps each season to follow up with the trends (perhaps we may reach a point where there isn’t really a need for clothes that can last long in the future). Rather, a question I have would be if there is a way to give the clothing a waterproof feature.
If you watched the TED video I have included on Bio Couture by Suzanne Lee, you would be disappointed to find out that the wearables made are degradable just like the one that Suzanne Lee wore as she made her presentation – that it is absorbing her sweat and may fall apart, especially if she is wearing it out in the rain. That’s why I feel that there is still much room for improvement in the scientific and technological aspect of the garment before we can start mass-producing such wearables to everyone. Too bad I am not a genius though I had an unformulated crazy idea that maybe we can coat the clothes in a layer of hydrophobic substance to reduce their attachment to water.