would you wear a dress made of wine slime?

[karyn]

Wet wine dress grows as 'cave woman' fashion

from cnn

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- It's guaranteed to make your head spin.

An Australian scientist has grown a dress from cellulose woven by bacteria in a vat of fermenting wine, saying it is art but could be the future of fashion.

The "cave woman" design dress must be kept wet because the cellulose fibers are not long enough to be flexible and, as it dries, they become brittle and break.

In order to shape the dress, slimy cellulose is scooped off the surface of the fermenting wine and layered around a blow-up doll. It then shrinks, taking the form of the body. The doll is deflated when the dress is in the right shape.

"This is art; it is not meant to be practical," inventor Gary Cass told Reuters on Wednesday.

"It is meant to be a provocative object, to spark debate about future fashion," said Cass, a scientific technician at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

Cass was inspired to create the dress when he was working in a vineyard many years ago, but it was not until he gained funding from an arts group that he was able to produce it.

Cass said fermenting wine produces a slimy, rubbery top layer caused by bacteria which, if left alone, keep spinning cellulose.

"We just took winemaking to the next step," he said.

"But the problem is that the fibers are not long enough to be flexible. The next step is to try and make the fibers longer or join them to get more flexibility."

Cass said that, once the fibers became more pliant, his creation would have a more practical application.

"If you wanted a shirt you could get a cast made of your body and layer the cellulose around it," he said.

[Velvet-Tongue]

neat

[Toe Cutter]

That dress would be awesome at one of those clubs in Cancun with a bubble machine. It would never dry out!