Old wine creates new dress Wednesday Mar 14 14:27 AEDT If you have plenty of wine and nothing to wear - try fermenting fashion.
West Australian researchers have grown a dress from the bacterial skin that forms on top of "off" red wine.
And they hope it could become the next big thing in fashion.
Their creation smells like wine and feels like sludge when its wet.
But the cotton-like cellulose creation fits as snugly as a second skin, University of Western Australia researchers Gary Cass, Donna Franklin and Alan Mullett say.
The trio grew the dress as part of a collaborative arts and science project called Micro'be', designed to use science to convert wine into a cellulose product.
Mr Cass, the team scientist, said the ultimate goal was to produce a wearable seamless garment that formed itself without a single stitch.
"The product is very delicate, comprising micro-fibrils of cellulose, the material that forms green plants' cell walls," he said.
"A non-hazardous, non-pathogenic bacterium, five microns in size, produces this material, which is more like tissue paper than cotton."
The inspiration came after he noticed a skin-like layer covering a vat of wine that had been contaminated with bacteria.
The trio hopes the discovery could mark the start of fabrics fermented by living microbes entering the $229.5 billion per annum Australian fabric manufacturing industry.
Mr Cass said Perth was one of the only places in the world where sciences and arts collaborated through hands-on experience.
The researchers are now using other forms of alcohol, including growing the bacteria on beer, to produce a translucent material.
