First, the bad news. You can’t get drunk wearing this wine dress. So you’ll have to find another secret way to get your morning buzz on. But the good news is that researchers from the University of Western Australia have found a way to grow fabric using a similar fermentation process to making booze.
The school’s Micro’be’ fermented fashion is made from pieces of organic fabric grown using Acetobacter bacteria. It’s responsible for turning wine into vinegar, but can also be used to create small fibres of cotton-like cellulose as it does for this unique application. The dress’s red hue comes from the fact that red wine was used in the initial fermentation process, but white wine, and even beers like Guinness have been successfully used to produce a wider range of colour options.
So maybe one day you’ll be able to easily pick up a six-pack of cocktail dresses on the way home from work. And we’re assuming the characters on Mad Men would have wholeheartedly embraced this technology had it existed back in the 1960s.