Grass growing from shoes. Evening gowns crafted from muchrooms. Probiotic athletic wear. Biocouture is here. Here’s more from Vogue Business:
Biocouture, a mix of material engineering, synthetic biology and delicate sewing, is a new entrant into luxury’s lexicon, coined around 2012 as a term by Suzanne Lee, a Brooklyn-based fashion designer with her then biodesign startup and Launch project introducing the idea how clothes could be manufactured using bacteria. It covers the concept of designing garments and products using living microorganisms such as bacteria. Not to be confused with alternative plant-based materials like Mycelium, these microorganisms live or hibernate in garments. While they’re not technically couture as recognised by the French Federation, the material’s handsewn nature is a nod to the craft, similar to Iris van Herpen’s first vegan haute couture dress made with cocoa husks released during Paris Fashion week last month in a surprising collaboration with Magnum or Jonathan Anderson’s Salone di Mobile effort for Loewe producing straw, reed, and briar raincoats, hats and baskets.