BioCouture: How to grow a dress from a bathtub of tea

Scar Bodice

Fibers forming in sweetened tea

As the Director of the BioCouture project, Suzanne Lee, a Senior Reseach Fellow at University of the Arts London, seeks to meld design and cutting edge bio and nano-technologies.  The project explores the use of lab grown microbial-cellulose as a source of fabric in clothing production.  The cellulose is produced by millions of bacteria grown in bathtubs of sweet green tea. She is partnering with Dr. David Hepworth, Co-Director of the award-winning Scottish  biotech start-up, Cellucomp, Ltd.;  which pioneers the development of products from new high tech sustainable composites.   The results are warmly organic in the way that leather or exotic skins can be, and yet have a distinctly unique aesthetic.

Cellulose "leather" jacket

Suzanne Lee explains her project