Living Garments

[zellerzone]

By "Ariadne", From _New Scientist_ 8 February 1979

In its steady renewal, our skin is always shedding its outer layers.
This steady loss of dead cells, many grams a day, passes unnoticed,
except for that fraction which accumulates as grime on our clothes;
but my sartorphytal friend Daedalus reckons it can usefully reclaimed.
He is experimenting with a flannel shirt sown with mustard-and-cress.
It will take up both sweat and skin-detritus as a sort of animal
fertilizer. Thus the wearer is automatically kept clean, and his
losses are recycled to help growth of his garment. Cress looks pretty
but is not an ideal skin-scavenger.Daedalus has hopes of lichens
(symbiotic fungus and algae) legumes (with their symbiotic root-
bacteria) etc. The aim is a vegetable culture which, seeded onto an
open-weave garment, will grow into a dense, insulating, wear-resistant
mat. Outside it will be leafy or mossy, while on the inside a soft and
absorbent root-structure glides over and constantly cleanses the
wearer's skin during his body-movements. His clothing will actually
thicken and grow stronger with age! And neither will ever need
washing. Cunning enough biology may even produce a logical hierarchy
of garments, each feeding on the one beneath, and with a decorative
flowering outer jacket, say, at the top of the food-chain.

But too rampant a sartorial eco-structure might attract butterflies,
bees, blackbirds etc. and might take to scavenging the wearer's skin
before he had really finished with it. A more modest ideal would be
safer, with slow-growing microflora seeded in pleasing patterns which
would slowly change and spread. Such clothes would solve the
fundamental overstocked-wardrobe dilemma, too. For while regularly
worn they would last for ever, even growing to adapt to e.g. middle-
age spread. But a neglected garment left at the back of the wardrobe
as unfashionable would wither and die - leaving the wearer no choice
but to recycle it by boiling into nutritious soup.

[zellerzone]

Now that's an idea that really grows on you.