Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. At no time is that truer than now, when technology has advanced the point that virtually anything is possible. Literally. Case(s) in point:

The Water-Soluble Wedding Dress:

A wedding gown that dissolves in water? Hmm. Interesting. But…why? “The wedding gown,” says Sheffield Hallam University lecturer Jane Blohm, “is perhaps one of the most iconic symbolic garments in humanity’s wardrobe and represents the challenges of ‘throwaway fashion’.” Created by students at Sheffield Hallam, These five gowns (each representing a stage in the dress’s disintegration into nothingness) were created as an exhibition to “…challenge the notion that a wedding dress should only be used once and […] to explore modern society’s attitudes towards throwaway fashion. The project is a union between art and technology which explores the possibilities of using alternative materials for our clothing.”

A dissolving wedding dress is unique, for sure, but not as unique as, say…clothing grown from (wait for it….) your body’s bacteria.

Here’s what creator Sonja Baumel had to say about her project:

In order to learn more about the lives of bacteria, I had the opportunity to complete a microbiological internship at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands. After having been introduced to the basics of microbiology, I started to experiment with skin bacteria and, at a later point, their reaction to textiles.

Since 2008, in the course of my thesis project at the Design Academy Eindhoven : (In)visible membrane: life on the human body and its design applications, I am exploring the human skin and its potential. This project is part of my on-going research and creative process. This work is part of the (In)visible membrane project which consists of following projects: crocheted membrane, oversized petri dish, bacteria texture, visible membrane I, bacteria textile and the (in)visible film.

The (In)visible membrane confronts scientific data and methods with fashion design in order to find a balance between individual identity and the surrounding local environment. By doing so, I want to create a new second living layer on our body based on the interaction between individuals and the surrounding.

What fascinates me is the human skin, the layer between the inside and the outside. a second skin can be found on our skin. It is a layer full of life, which serves as a membrane for exchange. This body membrane is made from the same substance as the world. The human body does not end with its skin, but it is invisibly expanding into space. The hidden membrane is something between our body and our environment. We enter this invisible micro level with a microscope and then enlarge it with design.

What happens if we make the micro world of the human body perceivable?I want to confront people with the fact that our body is a large host of bacteria and that a balanced perception of the body is closely linked with a balanced perception of the self.

Speaking of bacteria, here’s an entire wardrobe grown from fermented tea bacteria:

This amazing–and strange–garment was created by Suzanne Lee, who, at the time, was a senior research fellow at the School of Fashion & Textiles at Central Saint Martins. Starting from a “microbial soup, fibers begin to sprout and propagate, eventually resulting in thin, wet sheets of bacterial cellulose that can be molded to a dress form. As the sheets dry out, overlapping edges “felt” together to become fused seams. When all moisture has evaporated, the fibers develop a tight-knit, papyrus-like surface that can be bleached or stained with fruit and vegetable dyes such as turmeric, indigo, and beetroot.” (source)

If bacteria-cloth isn’t weird enough for you, what if you could shed your clothes like a snake sheds its skin?

But the one innovation that wins the award for strangest, most bizarre, can’t-believe-this-is-a-real-thing is this: An experiment which proposes to produce textile products infused with chemical compounds from cremated human remains.

The premise is this: Our world is full of resources and we need to do a better job extrapolating and using them, even if (and when) they come from non-traditional sources…like the ashes of a deceased person. Says Kerry Greville, the mastermind behind the project, “As a designer, I am concerned and driven by the ways we are able to detach ourselves from the source of our resource. Many in the western hemisphere see humankind as being separate from nature, as opposed to part of it. We identify materials as being ‘man-made,’ [which suggests] that the resources used in the making did not originate in nature. We are at odds with what is and should be available to us.” (source)