In the future, your clothes could come from bacteria, mushrooms, orange peel and even algae.

Fashion is going through the biotechnology and biodesign revolution. New materials for fabrics, leather and dyes appear where we least expect them. Algae in a pond can turn into foam on your new pair of sneakers. Multicolored bacteria can dye your party dress. The purse that your friends will love can come from the pineapple crown. Or it is even possible to reproduce the silk of the spider’s web in the laboratory and create the most beautiful models.

The great advantage of these new techniques with algae, fibers, fungi, bacteria and yeasts is that they are less polluting, do not require large amounts of water in their production and dispense with the use of non-renewable fossil resources, such as oil. In addition, many of them are biodegradable – that is, they naturally break down in nature. “These methods can reduce waste and pollution on the planet,” says Theane Schiros, a professor in the Mathematics and Science department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

Here in the awesome.club, we are fascinated by new technologies and fashion possibilities. Therefore, we gather and share interesting experiences. Some are in the study phase and others are already on the racks in magazines and online stores, ready for you to parade around. In the end, don’t miss the bonus about an incredible work of art made with silk from African spiders.

The use of bacteria to color fabrics is already a reality and is starting to gain the attention of stylists and the fashion industry. A microbe called Streptomyces coelicolor produces bluish, pink or red tones during its incubation period. And researchers have discovered that you can let it act freely on fabrics, which will generate random and unique designs – there will be no repetition or patterns.

Advantages for the Environment: dyeing with bacteria uses 500 times less water than the traditional industrial process, says Audrey Chieza, a biodesigner at the American company Faber Futures, who is studying the new technology. In addition, several chemicals used in the industrial pigment industry become unnecessary with this process.

The company Vienna Textile Lab, from Austria, works in a different way, extracting dyes from bacteria, which are then applied to fabrics, which guarantees color control by the designer. The pigments are being studied and have not yet been offered for sale, but the photo below shows the range of tones that can be extracted from the animals.

Italian researchers managed to create a thread from the waste of the orange juice industry. The peels and pomace of the fruits are processed and transformed into Orange Fiber, which creates a fabric that is as smooth as silk, as the manufacturers guarantee. Orange yarn can be used alone or in combination with other fibers. The look above, from H&M, was made with Orange Fiber for the H&M Conscious collection.

Advantages for nature: the new technology prevents tons of peels and other inedible parts of the oranges from being dumped in legal landfills or even illegally. What was meant to literally turn into trash can turn into your new party outfit.

Very traditional and exclusive brands are also using the new technology. One of them is the Italian tie brand E. Marinella, founded in 1914, which used Orange Fiber in one of its recent collections.

Spanish designer Carmen Hijosa discovered the power of fibers extracted from pineapple skins (the fruit’s crown) during a trip to the Philippines, a major producer of the fruit. After many tests, she and a group of researchers arrived at Piñatex, a very resistant product and an excellent substitute for leather for making bags, wallets, shoes and accessories. Pictured above, a bag made from Piñatex pineapple leather by the vegan brand Kantala.

Advantages for nature: it is yet another product made from material that would go to waste and also avoids the slaughter of animals to supply the leather industry.

Shoes by Nature Footwear, also in pineapple leaf leather

The experience of weaving a dress with silk extracted from spiders has already been put into practice in the past, but it required insane work (see the bonus🇧🇷 The American company Bolt Threads has developed a technology to create the same silk fiber as spider webs in the laboratory, only on a large scale and… without the presence of spiders!

Spider silk protein DNA is replicated by a fermentation process, which involves bacteria, water, sugar and yeast. Later, this silk protein is isolated and processed into threads, called Microsilk, with which the fabrics will be woven.

The model above was designed by English designer Stella McCartney (daughter of former Beatle Paul), known for her environmental concern, in collaboration with Bolt Threads. With the same silk, Stella also designed models of sportswear for the brand Adidas.

Advantages for nature: the process for creating spider silk fiber in the laboratory is natural and low-polluting. On a large scale, the technology can replace synthetic fibers such as nylon and polyester, which are made from fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource.

The Japanese company Spiber also created its version of spider silk in the laboratory. In partnership with the North Face adventure sports brand, it launched the prototype of this super resistant jacket called Moon Parka, whose development took more than five years of research. At first, few Moon Parka units will be sold in the form of a lottery. To apply, you must register on the Spiber website.

Mycelium, a species of mushroom, is gaining ground in high fashion as a substitute for leather. When cultivated in the laboratory, under suitable conditions, this fungus forms a dense and fibrous structure, which is tanned in a similar way to leather. And that can also be used in the manufacture of bags, shoes, clothes and accessories. The American company MycoWorks is one of the pioneers in the use of the technique. Above, the model displays a vest made of mushroom leather, known as muskin.

Advantages for nature: while an animal needs to be reared, fattened and slaughtered to obtain its leather, the cycle from fungal culture in the laboratory to the final product takes about three weeks. Using mushroom leather on a larger scale would reduce the amount of water used in the conventional material industry and go against the vegan philosophy of compassion for animals.

Mylo mushroom leather bag, created by the American company Bolt Threads

The American researcher Ryan Hunt worked on the development of a fuel based on algae, but discovered that they could be transformed into polymers and, later, into foam for the shoe industry and other artifacts, replacing materials made from fossil resources. . You know that green water you see in ponds? This is the microalgae that can be turned into the soft sole of your new pair of sneakers.

Ryan’s company now sells its seaweed foam, called Bloom Foam, to big brands like Adidas and Billabong. Its first partnership, with the Vivobarefoot brand, resulted in the launch of the Primus Lite Bio tennis model (pictured above), made with 30% of materials coming from plants. The brand’s goal is to reach 100% plant-based sneakers by 2021.

Advantages for nature: seaweed is abundant in nature and its filtration cleans the environment, as purified water returns to the river or lake. Its use reduces the extraction of fossil fuel, used in the manufacture of materials such as EVA (Ethyl Vinyl Acetate), very common in the tennis industry.

In the photo above, the various stages of seaweed transformation, from when it arrives wet from the lake until it is processed into foam polymers that will supply the shoe industry.

A tissue made from bacteria is already produced in Brazil, by the biotechnology company Biotecam, incubated at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The material is obtained through the fermentation of bacteria Acetobacter xylinum, found in vinegar. In an environment formed by water and sugar, these little animals unite in a colony that forms a kind of film, used for the manufacture of biological tissue. In the photo above, a parade of looks made with Brazilian bacterial fabric.

Advantages for nature: Creating fabric with bacteria uses much less water than manufacturing cotton. To get an idea, a common pair of jeans consumes more than 10 thousand liters of water to be manufactured. On a large scale, the biofabric would reduce the planting of cotton, a crop in which the use of pesticides is very common. What’s more, it is biodegradable.

In tanks like the one pictured above, bacteria are created. They agglomerate into films that, after drying, give rise to biological tissue.

Textile designer Simon Peers and businessman Nicholas Godley had the daring idea of ​​producing a luxury garment with fabric 100% woven from spider silk, before bioscientists discovered how to reproduce the material in the laboratory. It took no less than 8 years of collecting silk from spiders in Madagascar, until there were enough threads to make the yellow coat that we see in the photos.

The species had to be Nephila p. malagassa, an African island spider that produces a beautifully golden thread. At the end of the 19th century, French missionaries had already made fabrics with the silk of these arachnids and even created a machine to extract the silk from the animals. The technique was abandoned over the years because, of course, it was too laborious.

Consider that to make a thread of fabric, you need 24 strands of spider silk, which must be extracted by hand. Can you imagine the hassle? More than 2 million spiders were needed to get enough threads to complete the work.

The clothing was not made to be sold or used — not least because the fabric obtained from Madagascar spider silk is so delicate that it cannot even be washed, as it shrinks. When it was ready, in 2012, the cover was displayed in major museums around the world as a work of art. “At a time when it seemed like everything had already been done, we wanted to create something magical, something that would amaze people,” said Simon Peers.

What do you think of these fashion industry innovations? Is there anything that…