Wear Your Antioxidants: Red Wine is Woven into a Dress

Lady Gaga’s meat dress and PETA’s Lettuce Ladies have proven to the fashion world that nothing on your dining room table is off limits when it comes to apparel design.

Apparently, that also goes for beverages.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia revealed this week a dress they crafted entirely out of the contents of a wine vat.

Scientist Gary Cass teamed up with artist Donna Franklin upon his discovery that the rubbery layer lining the inside of a vat contaminated with Acetobacter fermenting bacteria could be combined with alcohol and result in a clingy cellulose fabric.

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The non-hazardous, bacteria-laced alcohol is seamless, clinging to the body as it’s poured on and then drying into a skin-like material. The process has also reportedly worked with beer.

Though the dress is rather inflexible and still carries a strong wine aroma, the creators are optimistic about building a brand behind the garment, calling it “Micro-be” in reference to the microbial cotton material of their first dress.

"Our society is based around capitalist ideas," Franklin said in a previous interview, according to Wired.co.uk. "So I think, as an artist, to have that opportunity to take your art into that system and infiltrate it and maybe change it, or change people's ways of thinking, particularly… when people are becoming more concerned about the ethics of production and consumption and green technologies, is a great thing."

Cass is currently completing further research on how the microbial material may be used to scaffold tissue engineering on wounds

According to Wired, the pair is planning to release a new dress by the year’s end.