grow your own cloth with bacteria - biofabrication

Fashion designer Suzanne Lee heads BioCouture's analysis project, which arose from a thought in her book Making the Future: Tomorrow's Wardrobe, a seminal text about future fashion and technologies. Her research uses nature to propose a radical vision of future fashion: will we tend to grow a dress out of a tub of liquid? BioCouture brings microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and algae to cellulose fibers, polysaccharides and macromolecules like silk to explore nature's proprietary materials for future buyer products. victims of bacterial cellulose, Lee aims to address pressing property and environmental issues around fashion and beyond. She is a senior researcher at Central Saint Martins, London University of the Humanities, working with scientists to investigate whether artificial biology will develop organisms that are optimized for product growth for future buyers.

“What I’m looking for is a way to give material the qualities that I need. So what I want to do is say to a future [insect], ‘Spin me a thread. Align it in this direction. Make it hydrophobic. And while you’re at it, just form it around this 3D shape.” 

—Suzanne Lee

Designer Suzanne Lee shares her experiences of growing a kombucha-based material that will be used as fabric or animal skin to create clothes. The method is fascinating, the results are astounding (although there is still a small downside that it can absorb water back), and so the potential is simply impressive.

Suzanne Lee, Head of Scientific Research at BioCouture at same name, is that the initial designer successfully "grown" from the polysaccharide to microorganisms in her tub. With a keen interest in environmental and real estate issues close to fashion and textile applications, Miss Lee is committed to collaborating with scientists to analyze whether or not artificial biology will evolve useful organisms for the cultivation of such products that clothing and footwear has optimized. She listens to her status, but finds it possible to "cultivate" your fabric!

As she mentions in her ted talk series, it's not just about sustainable clothing it's also about the amount of time and workforce required to make a piece of cloth and then being able to make desirable things out of it after stitching. If this technology comes up in the market, it can bring a drastic change in the fashion world and its economic status.